The Birthday Mom!! And her fantastic cake!

For the record, Nana and I had a lovely ride up to work today. She was in a bit of a mood, so I let her play whatever it was she wanted, but then I started getting kind of drowsy, so I went ahead and changed the song to "Coffeeshop Soundtrack" (upbeat and a Nana favorite - a good compromise), and then she, as thanks for my consideration, played the last song from Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, the one where they're dancing, and she realizes that they were both the same person all along... ahh, so good! Well, it's a favorite of ours, and Nana knows that this particular song almost always makes me want to cry. So things are still good there.
However, my dealings with Nana were not the most exciting part of the day. Nor was it when I went to my boss's house for the first time to wait for/help/stand awkwardly doing nothing around the IT guy. No, the most exciting part about today was that it's my mom's birthday! And you know what birthdays mean? That's right: cake and presents. And can you guess who usurped the cake project and tyrannically projected her own vision and taste onto said project? If you guessed Elizabeth, you guessed incorrectly. If you guessed Sheldon, then you are close, but not quite. If you guessed a helium-filled balloon shark, you were also wrong, but a lot closer. If you guessed me, you were spot on!
The cake turned out fantastically. To be fair, though, I share a huge chunk of this triumph with Natalie. But I will  get to that. I'll intersperse this with pictures, so you can see it. It was a gorgeous cake, and it tasted great, too!
We started with 2 9-inch round layers. I'm not incredibly picky; we used cake mix from a box. HOWEVER, there are things that you can to do improve boxed cake mix. The one that my sister, Natalie, always uses adds in an extra egg and a pack of instant pudding mix. For this cake, we used devils food cake with devils food pudding. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but somehow this made the cake batter ridiculously thick. Like, if I hadn't been planning on feeding this to my mother on her birthday, I probably could have sculpted Bigfoot on a pogo stick out of it. But I've been informed that, though this improved form of batter is thicker, it's not quite this thick, or this noticeably thick. Regardless, it all turned out fine; I somehow got the cake in the pans, and then flattened it out (sort of...), and it ended up tasting fine.
We're off to a great start!
Then we made the icing, which is from a recipe titled "Chocolate Butter Icing" from the cookbook Mom's Big Book of Baking, or, if you're from my house, Mama's Big Book of Bakin' (or "Bacon," as the case may be, depending on day and situation). Super good. Basically, you melt a million chocolate chips in, add a decent bit of butter, and a little corn syrup. So, as you can imagine, it gets pretty hard when it cools all the way, as chocolate is wont to do.
This was all done Sunday, and we had to wait until Monday to make the cake, so the cakes went in the freezer and the icing went in the fridge.
Patience is really hard.
One I finally got home from work on Monday, I ran and pulled the cake rounds out of the freezer. Unfortunately, it appears that no flat surfaces exist in our downstairs freezer, and the surfaces that I had chosen were not sufficiently smooth to prevent lump-ifying the bottom of the cake. Defrosting helped, but did not cure, the lumpiness situation. Rock solid lump-cake was followed up with rock solid icing from the fridge, which we attempted to melt, with little success, until we accidentally melted it too much, and it took forever to get back cold enough that we could spread it. I put Nat in charge of the icing.
So, while Nat was taking care of that, I went to work assembling this monster. I started by leveling off lumpy layer #1, which was a piece of cake (pun intended!). I was surprised how well this leveled. I then opened a can of almond paste and spread it thickly on this layer, and added a thick layer of cut strawberries. The next layer was placed on top, and then I leveled it off. Then, it was time to ice it.
Unfortunately, the icing was not ready. We had recently discovered Natalie's knack for making strawberry roses, so we took full advantage of that (instead of my lame attempts) and had her focus on this. As I have noted at least once previous to this, patience is not one of my greatest virtues, especially when it comes to baking. So, waiting for this icing to cool to a spreadable consistency was just about death. Thankfully, the delicate nature of the balance between hot and completely liquid and cold and rock solid allowed me to feel ok about myself as I shoved the icing in the fridge, paced anxiously around the kitchen for a few minutes, then pulled it out and whisked away any solidity that the icing had just gained.
Eventually, miraculously, the icing reached a manageable consistency. I then proceeded to dollop a large portion of the stuff on the top of the cake, like I'm pretty sure I saw on the diagram in our beloved Home and Garden cookbook. Enter my sister, expert strawberry carver and apparent cake-decorating critic. She leans over, to emphasize the fact that she's maybe half an inch taller than me, and says "ahem, you DO know that you are SUPPOSED to ice the cake on the sides first? That's how the PROFESSIONALS do it." She takes one cake decorating class at a bakery, and all of a sudden she's the expert. Well, ok, so professionals do ice the cake on the sides first. And I may have exaggerated that last bit slightly. But still! The point is, I handed over my icing-knife to my younger sister. Once the cake was iced, I grabbed some sliced almonds (NOT to be confused with SLIVERED  almonds!!!!) and sprinkled some on top. Then, we arrayed Natalie's 5 perfect strawberry roses on top. And, I must say, it looked gorgeous! If I ever have a midlife crisis, I'm totally going to culinary school.

However, the cake was not the shining gemstone in the brooch of a birthday evening that it was. Rather, it was one of the sidestones, which gets a little attention, but helps the overall brooch rather than being the focus of beauty on its own. No, the shining centerpiece of this jewelry pin was shipped to us in a small box earlier in the week, and then filled with helium that morning. Meet Sharky.

Why give our mother an inflatable, remote-controlled shark, you say? Well, here's the story. My mom is an avid Doctor Who fan, and one of the most recent Christmas specials involves fish (including sharks) who can swim through the air like it was water. So, when my dad saw two of these air-sharks that belonged to his co-workers, he immediately thought of Doctor Who, and consequently of my mom. The association was so loose, though, that we were a little worried that she wouldn't really like it that much.

Oh, how wrong we were.

After unveiling our aerial aquatic friend, my mom played around with him for probably another half an hour, until she decided that we should get along with the rest of the festivities (like cake and the other presents). She showed it to her seminary kids the very next morning (unable to wait until the lesson on Jonah), and then she continued to play with him sporadically throughout the day.

Sharky is officially the 7th member of our family, after Mighty Mac, the chipper-shredder. He can be seen watching TV, coveting cake, and creepily following people around, especially Natalie for some reason. 

The rest of the birthday was pretty good (minus the fact that we forgot to get ice cream). There was no rival to Sharky, but there was one other present of note. Unfortunately, Natalie's present, the fifth season of Psych, had not yet arrived, so she had to get a little creative. Her wrapping job was also fantastic, and symbolic, and thought provoking. Can you find the hidden pineapple?

Well, anyway, happy birthday mom! You're the best! :)