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On my birthday, I decided to set out in search of a birthday cake. I had planned to search earlier in the week, but did not, so my birthday arrived and I had no cake. (Dale had offered to bake a cake with the kids or buy one from a local restaurant. The restaurant makes cakes I love but the kids don’t love).

I appreciated his offer, but I wanted to find an actual bakery. A place you walk into that smells yummy and there are bakery cases with donuts, cakes, cookies, pies, bread and rolls. I didn’t want the bakery to be inside a gigantic supermarket, or the cake to be mass produced.

Finding a bakery is an easy task in the midwest where thousands of German, French, Dutch, and Italian immigrants settled. In the midwest,  everyone loves bakeries and keeps them in business. In Virginia, people must be worried about their health. We midwest people don’t worry too much about their health.

When I asked around for bakeries, most people couldn’t name one in the area. After much thought, one friend remembered one in Quantico town. Quantico town is a place most people would declare, “You’ll have to see it to believe it.” The town started out as a fishing village and eventually developed an old fashioned main street with barber shops and restaurants. Then the Marine Corps surrounded it. It is entirely enclosed by the base and the potomac river. It is lost in time.

The bakery is across from the train station and makes fabulous apple fritters and bread. It’s more like a little coffee shop when you walk in. You have to order ahead if you want a cake. So, no cake, but good bread.

When I left the bakery, I walked along the potomac, eating an apple fritter and enjoying the beautiful morning God had made. After weeks of much rain and gray, the sky was sparkling blue and the sun was warm. Amazingly the temperature was sixty degrees on December 3rd. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the sun reflected off the water; it was lovely.

When I walked back to the van, I called my friend Mo, since I consider her better than a GPS. She has lived in Northern Virginia forever and when I can’t find something she tells me where to look. She directed me to a bakery in Fredericksburg, a town further south.

There I found what I was looking for: Paul’s Bakery, right next to the Salvation Army. It met the criteria: yummy smell, baked goods lined up in bakery cases, a birthday cake to buy, and a line of men. You know it is a good bakery if there are men lined up buying donuts. If men are willing to go out of their way to stop and buy donuts instead of choosing the easy solution of buying one at the Wawa, the place must be good.

The baker gladly piped “Happy Birthday Mugs” on the cake, she didn’t mind me wandering around considering it all, and there were a lot of people in the back baking. The cakes were standard yellow or chocolate with white frosting. It tasted fresh and the kids loved it.

Searching for a bakery – a good way to spend a birthday.

Josiah turned 15 yesterday and requested a chocolate peanut butter cake for the celebration. A few months ago while researching recipes, I found a recipe for chocolate peanut butter cake that claimed to not only look good, but taste good. So, I figured I would give it a go.

I belong firmly in the camp of “better something taste good than look good.” This is different than the camp of “better something look good than taste good.” Most chain restaurants are in this camp.  There does exist a third camp of high achievers who strive for making food that “tastes good and looks good.” I am too lazy to join this camp.

However, I thought I would visit the camp for a day in an attempt to make this cake. My downfall from success is usually a result of my habit of skipping steps. “I don’t need to do that,” I’ll say. “That step is not necessary,” I’ll declare.

Time and time again, skipping steps has undone my success, but I still refuse to comply. My first famous cake collapse occurred on my nephew’s first birthday. I made a carrot cake at the last minute and did not allow the layers time to cool before I frosted them with cream cheese frosting.

The warm layers caused the frosting to melt and the cake slid into a messy pile as we sang happy birthday. That cake disaster did not end there. Unfortunately, the cake also gave my nephew an upset stomach during the entire eight hour plane flight home.

It is a tradition to retell this story at all family gatherings that have taken place over the last 16 years, especially if I am baking a cake.

So in the tradition of skipping steps, for Josiah’s cake I skipped the step of chilling the cake layers and chilling the frosted cake prior to the final fudge topping. In the recipe photo, the fudge topping drips over the top edge in a random pattern on all sides of the cake. This works fabulously if your cake is level. Of course, my cake wasn’t level. One side had no fudge drips and the other side had so much fudge that it was dripping off the plate.

After wiping up the excess fudge, I placed the cake in the fridge. Even though I had not gotten it quite right, it was far better than my usual efforts and I was feeling a bit proud. Therefore, I decided to show it off to my husband.

“Look at the cake I made!” I said as I opened the fridge door in triumph. He looked at it and replied, “What happened to it?” Thinking he was ignorant of the fancy way of pouring fudge topping over a cake, I replied, “It’s supposed to look like that.” He answered, “With a giant hole in the side?”

At this point, I actually looked into the refrigerator to gaze upon my glorious cake whose side was collapsed under the weight of the fudge.

Collapsing Cake

After the momentary shock, I pulled the cake out of the fridge, scooped up the collapsed part, put the mess on a plate, set it in front of Josiah and said, “Happy Birthday.” It was 8 am. Josiah ate his birthday cake and declared that even if it didn’t look good, it sure tasted good.

Bowling has become Zeke’s game of choice.  He is so good at Wii bowling that he beats his siblings.  When he had resorted to standing crayons on end for pins, I decided to buy him a children’s bowling set for his birthday.  He sets it up on the floor or on the bench and practices quite often.  Periodically, all other occupants of the house are forced into games of bowling.  When bowling, he puts his game face on.  He is already attempting to work on his hook as he releases the ball with his knuckles on top.  I see shades of Dale’s Daddy when he throws.  At Chuck E. Cheese this week, he spent most of his coins at skee ball.  Skee balls are a bit heavy, so I could see that his arm was tiring and I tried to encourage him to move to another game.  But he refused to stop.  When I wasn’t looking, he’d slip another coin in the slot and throw some more skee balls.  Dale may have hope yet to play in a league with his family.  Lucky for him, he has enough children that he won’t be handicapped by his wife.  Zeke has learned what Dale knows quite well:  I am a terrible bowler.  When Zeke tired on skee ball, I decided to try to help him out, and he realized quite quickly that maybe I wasn’t much help at all.