Birthday Baking

Three summer birthdays in our immediate family--and the first was mine. (Birthday Bacon) I did not bake myself a cake. I did not go to the store for a cake. I did not gather the eggs for a cake. I did not grind the flour for a cake. I did not eat cake. Marissa bought me a steak!

This past Tuesday, on about the second cool day of the summer, I fired up the oven and baked a (Betty Crocker box) cake. I did my best to get out of it, but I have a son-in-law who asked, called, begged, cajoled, and threatened to cancel the birthday party if I was not going to make a German chocolate cake. Starting with a box was fine, but it would not be a birthday without a cake.

 I didn't have that much on the docket that day besides mowing the lawn (and the lawn would happily wait a day) so I decided to spend the whole afternoon preparing a birthday dinner--chicken taco salad and cake. Sounds simple enough, but I started from scratch. I did not have a chicken. I did not even have an egg in the house. But why not make it a little fun?

So, first I went to (farmer's) market to buy a fat hen. When I couldn't find a hen, I checked out the five little peppers and how they grew. Picking (unpickled) peppers and chatting it up with the farmers--that's always fun.

Gotta  love diversity

Then, on to Taco Bell for a shell. They undercharged me for the four large shells I requested. Packaging them individually in plastic containers, like a salad, this Taco Bell had probably never had such an order before--shells without the salad! Next time I will suggest a fair price and ask them to just stack them up and throw them into a bag. But oooh, those greasy freshly-fried shells are decadent.

And then to the grocery store: chopped pecans, coconut, butter, half and half, sour cream, eggs--and three heads of lettuce.

Erica, visiting from Florida, chopped all the veggies

I had found a frosting recipe for German chocolate cake on allrecipes.com. Last winter I had made some kind of nut filling by cobbling together butter and cream and sugar and nuts and coconut (what's not to like) but I wanted to make an authentic German chocolate cake frosting. I read all the reviews and was a little intimidated--with the cooking times, the rolling boils, and whether to add cornstarch or not. The most baffling part was adding three egg yolks, whisked with a little water, into the mix. I was terrified that I would end up with scrambled eggs in the boiling caramel mixture! And just as I was stirring the boiling cauldron (wok) of butter, sugar, half & half and evaporated milk, Marissa called to check on how the cake-baking was going...coming? (and was I going to bring or take the cake to her house?)

I was beginning to feel like a real chef in this rare (never bake, hope to never eat cake) baking venture--measuring everything carefully, gingerly separating the egg yolks from the whites and even toasting the pecans and coconut in a 350 degree pre-warming oven.

After a hot summer of Caesar salads with deli chicken and white trash lettuce (Alexis Stewart's term for iceberg lettuce--which was considered junk food in Martha's kitchen), it felt a little weird to be slaving away over a hot stove on a Tuesday afternoon.

What's with egg yolks in the frosting?

After a very long boil I'm still not sure the frosting got as thick as it was supposed to, but it stuck to the cake pretty well once it started cooling--and everyone said it was delicious! Really, what's not to like--butter, sugar, evaporated milk, half and half, vanilla, coconut, pecans--egg yolks? But it could have gone so wrong if the eggs had scrambled!

Yum. Served with premium vanilla icecream

There was lots of sweet corn ('tis the season) at the farmer's market, and I broke down and bought a couple of ears. Freshly picked corn (wow--was it sweet!) was one more option for the taco salad.

The salad bar buffet, in addition to the usual veggies, included chicken taco meat, black beans, chopped black olives, sliced avocado, shredded cheese, sour cream and salsa. The ultimate topper--old-fashioned Western dressing, with HFCS listed as first ingredient. (What's not to like?) I was also asked to buy this new kind of locally made corn chip, with matching salsa:

Remember this?--world's worst song:

I don't think that I can take it

'Cause it took so long to bake it

And I'll never have that recipe again

Oh, no!