last day of magic

I decided to start making my mum's birthday cake today. She turns 50something this Sunday, and seeing how I would be fighting the good fight on Sunday with my stack of history notes and a mug of ultra-caffeinated coffee-like liquid in hand, doing something last-minute on the actual day would result in my untimely emotional breakdown.



Of course, my mother being my mother, I had to rule out chocolate-based cakes that would torment the fragile tastebuds that came with age. All signs pointed to The Carrot Cake and its promise of a mass of white gleaming cream cheese frosting. In my food-induced hubris, I decided to make one with two layers with a cream cheese and maple syrup frosting, thinking that the resulting product would be a towering, breathing circle of caramelised-carroty goodness. Of course, the cake did turn out very well.



My sister got a great upper-body workout by just grating the carrots. Not only do I get help disfiguring the "baby" carrots, I get to motivate others by promising calorie offsets!





The cream cheese frosting of sin and depravation. Hunks of cream cheese, butter and sugar. I had to reduce the amount of sugar I put in, but the addition of maple syrup really took the cake (pun intended and hopefully appreciated). I found a $13 bottle of Canadian maple syrup that wasn't just maple-flavoured glucose syrup with caramel colouring. This is the real McCoy but only attainable at the cost of my dignity, because while at the checkout counter, I was short of the full amount by $2 and an auntie behind me had to bail me out of my mini-financial crisis.

Actually, I was really touched and surprised to say the least, because in spite of the problems in the world thoughtlessly left for our generation to solve, someone perhaps affected by the turmoil would still willingly help out a kid who splurged on an expensive bottle of maple syrup. (Oh but it was so worth it.)


In a tragic turn of events, while drying a spatula, my grandmother exclaimed loudly in horror and I turned in time to see her drop the cake while flipping it the other way. Oh well, I'm not angry at all, just disappointed that I couldn't let my 2-layer cake dreams come true. Everyone else, on the other hand, probably appreciates the currant-studded preview which is really just a shadow of what is to come when I finally frost the other unspoiled layer.




And speaking of untimely breakdowns, Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson have passed on, and I'm saying this as if no one has heard enough of it on Facebook. I never watched Charlie's Angel (oh well, I DID very briefly like that Destiny's Child song in the 00's remake), and I'm apathetic about MJ's songs and will never see him as the king of pop (king of prostheses?), but let us all remember the 30,100 or so children in developing countries who died today from diseases that stemmed from starvation and poor sanitation, who never took a sip of the clean water that we bathe in everyday, let alone live in an air-conditioned Californian dream mansion, who never slept on a comfy bed to snuggle up to their parents or celebrate their 13th birthday without struggling to pull through yet another day. Just to put things in perspective.