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When people express they feel sorry for our daughters for being so outnumbered, I laugh. I may have seven sons, but our two girls are like seven girls. Aidan and Beatrix are nine years apart. This is perfect. They are interested in different things, wear very different sizes, and have their own rooms. Sisters who are close in age often clash. These two find a lot to admire in each other. I’m so grateful they have such a special bond.  Beatrix and Aidan Ryley told me he wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for his birthday. How simple! Finally, a child with a non-crazy birthday cake request. Last year’s Tardis cake was tricky enough. Maybe Ryley was finally moving beyond having geek-culture inspired cakes now that he’s getting deeper into his teens. Nope. On the morning of his birthday, I mentioned how I’d bake his chocolate cake while he was at school. He said something about having Steve on his cake. Please? If you don’t know who Steve is, then you probably never heard of Minecraft. If you’ve never heard of Minecraft, where have you been? I contemplated Ryley’s cake and how to combine Steve and chocolate quickly and easily. I thought I’d try to make fondant squares and make Steve’s pixelated face, but I quickly nixed the idea when I recalled I do not know how to make fondant. So, I poked around looking at Minecraft junk and found these templates for 3D paper figurines. It was decided. I’d print the templates on heavy paper, cut them out, glue them together, and perch them on the still-to-be-made cake!  Teddy photobombing the cake... And then I thought about the shape of the cake. EVERYTHING in Minecraft world is a cube or square. I couldn’t make a round cake. After mixing the batter (I used this recipe, which was FABULOUS), I poured it into two pans. One was a small square, one was a small rectangle. I baked them and nearly averted disaster when they overflowed a bit in the oven. I started formulating Cake Plan B, but decided to give them a few more minutes of cook time, which worked. Once I took them out of the oven, they settled and all was well.  Minecraft Cake After cooling, I placed the square cake on a stand and frosted it with chocolate frosting. Then I put the rectangle cake on top and frosted that so it was tiered. In between mixing, baking, cooling, and frosting, I made Steve, A Creeper, and a pig using the templates I printed. It took a long time to make the paper figurines because of the meticulous cutting, folding, gluing, and then assembling. I poked a toothpick into a foot on each of the figurines and stuck it in the cake. I didn’t want frosting to get on them, so they’re actually floating slightly above the frosting. Somehow, I managed to keep the cake a surprise until we were ready to sing happy birthday to him. The look on his face made all the work worth it: The glue stuck to my fingers! The eye strain! The gobs of frosting I consumed to make sure it was high quality! I’m really pleased with how it turned out because he was so happy.  Happy 14th Birthday, Ryley! Aidan texted me from school with news her PE class required a uniform and a combination lock. She finally got around to taking PE in high school, amusingly choosing aerobics. I had to explain aerobics when she was perusing her choices because Olivia Newton John and headbands and those high-thighed unitard things were a bit before her reign. Because she put off taking gym, she never needed a locker or the lock until now. I didn’t feel like rushing out to a store to buy a lock. Thankfully, we recalled my old combination lock from my teen years was rattling around in the garage somewhere. I still remember the combination. My husband found the lock, tried the three numbers, and it popped open. It has a good memory, too. He marveled at my memory. I’m not surprised I remember the numbers. Seeing the combination lock with the baby blue dial brought back memories I haven’t thought about in a long time. Maybe I remember the numbers because for being in gym was torturous. I hated changing in front of the other girls, opting to change in a toilet stall. I hated the towels, which I was sure hadn’t been white since 1947. I hated the smell, the gossip, the clothing label comparisons. I hated that my shoes had four stripes instead of three, like real Adidas. When my asthma flared up bad enough to require hospitalization, I was happy. My doctor finally wrote a note excusing me from gym. For one happy month, I reported to the front office instead of the locker room. I filed attendance sheets. I was probably the best attendance-sheet-filer in the history of the school. Eventually, my reprieve ended. The governor didn’t stop my return to gym class with a midnight phone call. My fingers spun the dial again, true to the three numbers I never forgot, then or now. I handed over the lock to her. She took it to school. I’m picturing it hanging through metal loops, holding her locker shut while she jumps around to raise her heart rate for 30 minutes. I didn’t really need aerobics to make my heart race. Sometimes, being a teenaged girl is enough. Being the mom of one? Look out, Olivia.  Spiderpig! Spiderpig! Does whatever a Spiderpig does! Does he swing from a web? No he can't, he's a pig. And Aidan. |
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