Hey, Hey, It's My Birthday--Let's Have Some Cake!

This is what awaited me this morning when I woke up. 

The Ever-Gorgeous Earl was up until 3 a.m. making me a Birthday Cake. Now, while this is totally fabulous, it may not seem to you to be a total act of love, but wait: this is not your standard Birthday Cake, not by any means. Let me tell you why--and, in the process, explain pretty much everything.

I have always been spoiled. Not in the sense of getting everything I want or pitching tantrums or acting like a diva and being allowed to get away with it. No, that's not what I mean. I mean that I have lived my life with two people--my mother when I was little, The EGE after that--who loved me and treated me like it. Being well-loved is a blessing of the biggest sort, and I have been lucky.

My mother was A Birthday Person. You know, the kind of person who makes a big deal out of your birthday if you're her kid, with a special cake and a pile of gifts and letting you do whatever you want all day long. You get to wear what you want, within reason. You get to eat what you want for lunch, and she'll probably go to the store and buy a little cup of shrimp cocktail for you. Even into adulthood, I got the Royal Birthday Girl treatment.

The EGE? Not so much into birthdays. As in, not at all into the whole Birthday Thang. With eight brothers (no girls) growing up, birthdays were not about the cake and the tiara, you know? So while he'd always do the gift-and-card thing, he never really got into treating me like a queen, and this chapped my butt royally. Did I mention spoiled?

Especially after my mother died five years ago and there was no one to take up the slack in the Birthday Girl department. Now, I know full well how selfish and childish this is and how many, many people in the world would be happy even to have a card or an email on their birthday. I get that. I do. I know exactly how spoiled I am. 

It's not about the presents. Not at all. I don't need or want anything, and I don't much like getting gifts because of that--there's nothing I need or want. Nope: what it's about is being The Queen for the Day. What does this mean? Ahhhhhh--that's where we get into problems. 

I have no idea what it means. I don't want to go out to lunch (I don't eat lunch). I don't want to take the day off and go to a spa (I like working; I wouldn't do well in the shared-pedicure-tub-thing of a spa = ick). I don't want to go to a movie or out to dinner. I like my life just fine, and I like what I do every day. 

I just want to be Treated Like a Queen, and I have absolutely no idea what that means. 

So. There were a couple years there that were kind of rough, when I'd hope for something I couldn't name and then be disappointed. Irritating for everyone involved. Then, a couple years ago, I sat down and figured it out. I told The EGE, "A tiara. A wand. Cake, but not regular cake."

The man is brilliant, as I might have mentioned before. He waited until after I'd gone to bed, got in the car, went to The Dreaded Wal-Mart (which he doesn't dread, not if I'm not with him and he doesn't have to listen to me rant about the people grazing their way through the cookie aisle) and bought balloons and streamers and a big "It's My Birthday!" button and a neon light-up plastic tiara. He made me a cake.

It was fabulous, and I was happy. I wore the big button all day long, and yes, I wore the tiara, too. And the cake? Ahhhh, the cake.

I am not a cake eater. I don't much care for things that are kind of sweet. If I'm going to eat refined sugar, I want to make it worth it. I want real sugar, and I want butter, and I want chocolate and nuts and caramel and coconut. I want it all, all at once. So what I really like is the frosting. I adore frosting! Granted, I eat it once, maybe twice a year, but by golly, I make it worth it!

So of course my mother had long ago devised a way to make a cake for me that I would eat. She got a big shallow pan (I'm sure it's a specific kind of pan, but I don't cook and have no idea what it is). It's square, about twice the size of a regular cake pan. She made the regular amount of cake batter and spread it in this pan so that the cake was half the thickness of a regular cake. And then she doubled or quadrupled or whatever the frosting recipe, so that there was twice as much frosting on half as much cake.

When she died, The EGE got the cake pan. He's been making my Aunt Sissy's Pineapple Goo Cake for me. The frosting has coconut, sugar, butter, Carnation Evaporated Milk, vanilla, pecans, and walnuts (I just asked; I have no idea how to make this cake). He makes extra frosting that goes in the refrigerator--I eat it with a spoon.

Yeah, I tend to be a little more hyper than usual for the week or so this stuff lasts.

Then, last year, he decided that since I was still leaving most of the cake, just eating the frosting off the top, that he'd quit making this rich, moist pineapple cake from scratch and do something else. He found a recipe for Praline Cookies. He makes the cookie dough and spreads it out in The Big Pan, cooks it like a sheet cake and then frosts it like my Aunt Sissy's cake.

Praline Cookies with Fabulous Frosting! Sugar on top of sugar! Butter on top of butter! Heaven!

He makes this once a year. We always cut it up and give a lot away, although we suspect that people don't actually eat it--most people are more the Angel Food Cake with One Strawberry kind of sweet eaters. You know: they eat something sweet several times a day but nothing ever that's REALLY sweet. I eat something REALLY sweet maybe once every couple of months, and it lasts me for a long, long time.

So now you see what I mean by being spoiled rotten. It's not about presents or a day spent being indulged with a facial. It's about someone really paying attention and then figuring out a way to make you happy. It's a plastic light-up tiara and enough sugar to send a flight to Mars. 

Ahhhhh. A fabulous birthday, indeed! I wish you were here to help me eat some cake~~XO