Carrot Cake

For some reason still quite unbeknownst to me, Tony's favorite cake is carrot cake. I am a chocolate lover myself and cannot really understand why a birthday cake would be wasted on a cake of the carrot variety. However, it was not my birthday so carrot cake it was. BUT I've never cooked a carrot cake before. I came to find out in a hilariously awful way that baking carrot cake is not quite the same as baking regular cake. I rather pride myself on my cake baking/decorating abilities. This carrot cake essentially crushed my grandiose dreams of a future career as a cake baker/decorator extrodinaire.

For the first time in my life, I am ashamed to admit, my cake stuck to the bottom of the pan when I took it out of the pan. The entire bottom of the cake was stuck to the pan and I had to piece it back together in chunks . . . like a Frankenstein or Sally cake. Obviously that wouldn't do so I decided to flip it again onto yet another plate. Now this is where this experience got really mortifying. The top of the cake (which was on the bottom at this point) stuck to the plate it was on. It didn't just stick . . . this thing stuck hard. The entire middle portion of the cake (along with a good 2-3 inches of cake) stuck in a large chunk to the plate. So now my cake was Frankenstein on one side and giant gaping hole on the other. It was too late at this point to make another cake so I had to salvage the pathetic remains of my destroyed cake. I coated it in thick yellow icing and covered it in candles. It was without a doubt the absolute worst cake I have ever made in my entire life. I was so disappointed and marginally upset.

In the end it didn't look too bad (even though I was still not happy with it). And guess what!

It tasted just fine!

Shortly before Tony's birthday I received an e-mail from his mother outlining exactly how birthdays are to be celebrated in the Torres family. The cake, party, and pictures part I already had covered. It was the next little bit (which is definitely not a tradition in my family) that I was particularly excited about. Actually, I was a bit excited and quite a little bit guilty about it too. I wouldn't want this done to me on my birthday, but traditions are traditions. AND who am I to go against a mother's wishes?!

And this is pretty much my favorite picture right now: