My Greatest Accomplishment...

So, in my family it is a tradition for birthday cakes to be made from scratch. My mom has a ridiculously fantastic recipe for a double layer chocolate cake and a chocolate buttercream frosting. My sisters and I learned to make this cake as we grew up. It is a family classic, and it is always worth the effort. So much deliciousness.

Over the years, we have all pretty much mastered this recipe. Lots of birthdays. However, every once in a while there comes a moment when the person who has been selected to make the cake for someone's birthday does something...different. The most infamous of all of these mess-ups was the year--many years ago--when Dad made the cake for Mom's birthday. I was pretty young at the time, maybe 9 or 10, but we all still remember this cake like it happened yesterday. 

Dad baked the two cake layers, and took them out of the pans with no problems. Then he started to ice those cakes with the traditional chocolate buttercream frosting, and that's when it happened. The entire cake split right down the center--it was like "The Land Before Time". We could tell that Dad was a bit discouraged by these results, but he filled in the enormous cake canyon with more frosting, put a couple of candles on top, and presented it to Mom with his apologies. 

All of us kids were in shock. No one had ever before presented a double layer chocolate birthday cake that wasn't perfectly intact! It just wasn't done! So naturally our little juvenile brains fully expected this cake to taste sub-par, at best. And then the cake was finally cut, and we started to eat it.

And do you know what? 

It was the most delicious, succulent, moist and utterly wondrous cake any of us could remember eating. We're pretty sure that the moistness was the main reason for the cake's falling apart the way it did, and that the extra frosting that Dad used to try and fill in the gap only added to the deliciousness. This cake--now known in our family as "The Grand Canyon Cake"--is still the golden standard of birthday deliciousness. Oh sure, there have been many other cakes that have been very tasty and that haven't fallen apart, but somehow the Grand Canyon Cake still shines as a beacon of hope to all those who wish for Birthday perfection. 

There have been other mess-ups over the years as well. And they have all been delicious, and we'll all get a good laugh out of them. However, none of them could ever hold a candle to Dad's extraordinary feat.

And in all those years, I've never had an epic fail before. My cakes have always come out of the pans and stayed whole and never presented any real challenge for me, frosting-wise. I sometimes wondered just what I was missing out on. Well, this year, as I prepared the cake for my son's birthday celebration, I found out.

It was my first time cooking with my brand new cake pans and parchment paper. Trust me, it's not as easy as it sounds. At least...not for me it isn't. Anyway, when I pulled the cakes out of their pans, I also pulled off the parchment paper. I was a bit worried about the structural integrity of these cakes, as the parchment paper had been wrinkled around the edges and left ridges around the bottom and sides--they were like two giant, flat, cupcakes. I let them cool for a while, and then I made the frosting and pulled out the cake holder that I would be using. 

I started frosting the bottom layer, and it went quite well, boosting my confidence, and making me believe that I really had a chance to continue my streak of excellence. And then I placed the top layer, and things started to go a bit...crooked. I figured I could straighten it all out as I frosted the sides of the cake so I started frosting the top. One side went quite smoothly. No problems. And then I reached the other side, and that's when things started to go wrong. The edges of the cake started to crumble. I figured: "Oh, it's no big deal. I can just cover that up." 

Oh no I couldn't! 

I tried to smooth the frosting over the crumbly part, and then the cake started crumbling more and more and more and more. I stood there and watched, helplessly, as--eventually--half of the entire top layer of my son's birthday cake had disintegrated completely into a puddle of crumbs and frosting. As I watched this horror show unfolding, I felt so helpless and flustered and I really wasn't sure if I wanted to start crying or put my fist through what was left of that stupid cake. 

I am proud to say that I did neither. I thought of my family--and specifically my dad and his famed Grand Canyon Cake and I realized that here--here was my chance to finally reach that level of birthday infamy. I had some leftover frosting, and...AND...a brand-new package of Double Stuf Oreos. I had planned to use them as a sort of garnish on this cake, but they were about to become more. So much more. 

Oh, and that cake/frosting puddle I talked about? I took a freaking spatula and I scooped that delicious gunk into a bowl. I would take it to Mom's house with me, as a trophy--as proof that what had happened really was an accident, and not just me trying to out-do my Dad. Once I had everything put together, I put the lid over my creation, and presented it to my family. They were all highly impressed with what is now known as "The Avalanche Cake of 2014." 

And guess what! It was quite tasty, and everyone loved the Oreos. AND, that bowl full of disintegrated cake bits? My brother and my Mom ended up splitting it. It was the coveted treat of the evening. Oh yes, we take our birthday cake experiences very seriously in my family. If we're going to ingest those calories, they had better be worth it!

My big sister, "Josie", looked at the cake before it was served and said: "You know, I bet you could post a picture of that on Pinterest and people won't even think it's a mistake. They'll probably even try to duplicate it." We got a good laugh out of the sheer truth of that statement, but I decided to keep my triumph a secret--between me, my family and the blogosphere.

So it just goes to show: What seems at first to be a catastrophic failure can actually be one of your greatest triumphs with a little improvisation and a good sense of humor. There's your take-home message for the day. You're welcome.

Oh, and in case you don't believe me, I took pictures of this masterpiece. 

**Here's the cake, all patched up and looking disastrously fabulous (The coloring on the top of the cake is a bit off, because I had to remove my son's name from the picture, but all of the edges have not been touched up at all.)**

**And here is what Jim Gaffigan would call the "Loser Pile in a Sadness Bowl"**

Oh, and in case you were wondering what CT's reaction was to his mother's epic fail for his 9th Birthday cake: He just smiled and laughed along with everyone else. He didn't care at all about how is cake looked. He even tried to re-name it: "Oreo Falls". (Pretty darn clever, although the majority vote won out in this case.) He was such a good sport, and he just hugged me and thanked me and his only request was that when the cake was cut, he got the "C" from his name and at least one Oreo on his slice. He was such a grown up about it, I was so proud. (Don't even get me started on how quickly that kid has gone from my sweet little guy to my-sweet-little-guy-who's-really-not-so-little-anymore-but-I'm-still-in-denial-so-don't-burst-my-bubble.)

Well, Happy Birthday, CT. Your 9th birthday shall forever be immortalized as "The Year of the Avalanche Cake." You are officially a legend!