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| On the train! |
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| Another old friend from daycare!! |
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| Tate and the birthday girl! |
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| Those two = Trouble |
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| Me? Trouble? |
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| Creepy!! |
Monday found him going to Zoo Camp for one final week! We had a new babysitter who came to our house in the morning then picked him up for me in the afternoons! I'm so very blessed that Tate is so easygoing about having people come in and out of his life to take care of him. She's a sweet young black woman in between jobs with a college degree. I'm happy to help her out any way I can, probably paying her more than I should, but she was laid off in early April, so she needs so cash. I'm really hoping she finds something soon.
He immediately started putting it together!! We only had time for part of it the first night; as soon as he got home from Zoo Camp the next day he finished putting it together and took pictures of his finished product :)
However, the cake was not supposed to be homemade. Tate and I went to Whole Foods on Sunday to order his cake...I had already ordered the Lightning McQueen cake topper, so I needed a half sheet cake. I ordered a vegan (due to his egg allergy) cake with vanilla buttercream icing to be picked up Friday at noon. I was told I could pick it up anytime after 8am that Friday.
Thursday early evening as I was leaving work I got a voicemail telling me they couldn't make my care. Mind you this was at 5:30pm...they had called around 4:30pm. I called to see what had happened. They no longer used the bakery they had used for years to make their vegan bakery products; in fact they hadn't used them in over a month. Yes a month. So when I had ordered our cake on Sunday it was a known fact that they had no way to make my cake. Even stranger they do not look at their cake orders until the day they are to be due. Seriously? A cake that I was supposed to be able to pick up as early as 8am the following day? You didn't look at the order until 430pm the afternoon prior? I was furious. I explained to the manager, who it took me several tries to get a hold of, that I knew not having a birthday cake was far from the end of the world, that in the grand scheme of life it was not a big deal. I also explained though that I had a little boy who was super excited about his birthday cake, and that getting another vegan cake was not a simple as walking into Kroger and buying one off the shelf. That I had trusted them to help me keep my child safe and provide him with a cake for his party. I understand that people make mistakes, and the woman who took my order made a mistake. Now I was stuck trying to figure out how to order a cake with less than 24 hours to receive said cake or make a half sheet cake MYSELF. That seemed so incredibly daunting especially given I had a massage appointment the following morning at 930am for 90 minutes that I would get charged for canceling at the last minute (and ooh boy did I need that massage!) I didn't have a cake pan for a half sheet cake, and trying to find a recipe for that large a vegan cake seemed almost impossible.
I did find a local bakery online that specializes in allergy friendly cakes, and I sent an email to the company around 6pm explaining my situation asking for just a simply vegan cake that I could icing myself the next day.
Imagine my surprise when the owner of that bakery, JodyCakes, called me herself that night at 8:30pm to tell me she really wanted to help me, but just didn't see how it was possible so late in the game. She offered to make us cupcakes as long as I called by noon on Friday. She was so kind and so generous with trying to work through options with me. She most definitely did not have to call me from her home; I will definitely be visiting her bakery soon.
I found a recipe online that I decided to try. So after my fantastic massage I made my way to Williams Sonoma to buy a half sheet cake pan and something to decorate the icing with...piping around the border. I then ran to Target to buy last minute party supplies and cake cooking supplies (as always I forgot something...thank goodness for my next door neighbors!). Then I picked Tate up from Zoo Camp and we made our way home for an abbreviated Game/Movie Night which ended up being 'Make The Birthday Cake' Night. I made four separate batches of the cake and poured them all into cake pan. I was worried that just quadrupling the recipe would make it weird, so 4 individual batches seemed the better alternative. My biggest worry was that the cake would fall in the middle as that seems to be the most common mishap in making an egg-free cake. And the fact that my cake would be so huge made it seem, to me, that that was more likely to happen.
Guess what?
It didn't sink!
My kitchen was a hot mess though!
There it is...cooking away! And yes yes I know I shouldn't have opened the oven...I only did it the one time for the picture...I promise!
Wanna see how it turned out? Well you gotta read the birthday party post!!
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