The Birthday Surprise

My Birthday started off like any other day, I woke up rather grumpy after only 5 hours of sleep ( I was up late writing the previous blog :). Paul wished me Happy Birthday, we got ready for work and reached work - late - like most days. The rest of the day was spent working and answering phone calls from friends and family calling to wish me on my Birthday. At lunch time, Paul picked me up and took me to a sushi restaurant we used to frequent and where they make you a special little Birthday Sushi Plate. Like always, we ate too much and headed back to work. As Paul dropped me off, he said he was going to run a few 'errands'. I knew that meant he was going to clean up the house some more and buy me something, most likely some flowers and/or a cake. I also had a strong hunch that someone would be coming home since he spent some time on Thursday tidying up the house.

So B-Day afternoon was spent in doing some work and at the same time doing a little research for my first food blog project - a cake for Mom & Dad's (Paul's Parents) Anniversary. Dad likes coconut desserts and so I decide to make it a Coconut White Chocolate Cake. As I was looking around for icing ideas, I came across this Cake Decorating class at Michaels. I instantly decided to join. I pinged (Nerd slang for chatted over Instant Messaging) my friend Ankita and reeled her in as well. By the time Paul picked me up in the evening (40 minutes too late - so I guessed he had stopped by Costco to buy me a gold bracelet that I had been eyeing last week), I was all excited about the cake decorating class. So he took me to Michaels (after giving me a beautiful bouquet of flowers) to register for the class and buy the class supplies. I bought the biggest Wilton Cake Decorating kit I could find. If you are wondering, why don't I start small, then I shall quote someone I know, "If it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing". We then headed home to get ready for the second half of the B-Day celebration - Dinner for 2 at Cheese Cake Factory.

As we were walking to the restaurant from the parking lot, I hugged Paul and told him how happy I was that it was just the 2 of us, I was really looking forward to the quite weekend of baking! On the way to the restaurant entrance, Paul paused a couple of times, was very listless and as we neared the restaurant he insisted he wanted to go to the AT&T store. The AT&T store part irritated me because we were 30 minutes late for our dinner reservation! As we turned into the restaurant entrance, Paul held back and I walked ahead. And sitting there, were Anand and Ankita! I was a little surprised and was telling them it was such a nice surprise to see them, when I noticed Anand looking at the person next to him. I couldn't understand why he was constantly looking there so I turned - only to find Diya, my sister sitting there! I was surprised all right! When I spoke to her a few weeks back, she said she couldn't come to Portland on my birthday weekend because my niece Rachel had Sunday school. And I completely fell for that. Apparently Paul had called her a couple days before I did and she agreed go along with the surprise. It was a great surprise!

Any surprise that brings family to Portland (Especially when the family ahs 2 cute little kids), is a great surprise.

We had a great Birthday dinner with way too much good food. Rest of the weekend was a chaos of late night talks, big celebration dinners and a Super Bowl party. But amidst all this I was inclined on making some baking happen, so we decided to bake the cake for  Mom & Dad after all. So Anand and Ankita  came over on Saturday afternoon. After a lot of research I picked a hybrid buttercream recipe that I read in the Art of Dessert blog because the blog mentioned how the icing was soft and yet was very smooth like meringue. The icing was really tasty, not too sweet and really creamy. Though it was a good icing for covering the cake, it wasn't very good for piping flowers. But it was too late to make another icing, so we decided to go ahead with it anyway.

I came across a guest post on Ria's Collection that described how to make chocolate lattices. I liked the idea of a chocolate lattice very much. Initially I planned on piping an intricate design. But the chocolate was very hard to work with and it started hardening rather quickly and a fourth of the way into making scroll like designs, the tip had completely hardened. So we melted some more white chocolate chips and decided to go with a quick checkered design. This came out well. But we waited a few seconds too long before we wrapped the chocolate around the cake, so there was a little cracking. But it was still a good first attempt. Diya used the excess molten chocolate to write out 'Happy Anniversary Mom & Dad'. She also drew a few hearts and leaves. We colored the leaves with some powdered green color and gold dust. We also dusted the lettering with some gold dust to give it a little shimmer. Piping the drop flowers was easy, but because the icing was a little denser than we had expected, it broke off leaving crooked edges. Another problem I faced while making the roses was that the icing had a very tough time sticking to itself. But the end result surpassed our expectations. I had started out wanting to make coconut cake for my in-laws, but we ended up with a mini wedding themed cake.

The cute part was when it was time to cut the cake, Isaac, my 2-1/2 year old nephew started crying - 'don't break the fence'! He was really upset that Mom & Dad broke the chocolate lattice to get to  the cake.

Note to self: No chocolate lattices on Isaac's birthday cake.