MIL Birthday

TGIF!!  Today's post is about my mother-in-law's birthday.  So, another year has come to a close for her and another year is starting!  I hope we started her year out right with the fantastic little party thrown especially for her.  I find that as we get older, our sense of celebrating birthdays are just not as exciting as when we were kids.  Right?  I, for one, used to looooove birthday parties!  However, as I grow older (and more tired, I guess), birthdays became just another day!  It's kind of sad, now that I think about it, but I guess that's just the way the cookie crumbles!  Anyways, my MIL was pretty excited to have the family come over and celebrate her.  She just couldn't wait for my husband and I to arrive so that we can start her birthday!  We decided that we'll just do an intimate gathering of family.  We made some super yummy hot grill (where we cook our food right on the table top!), had some delicious wine, and topped everything off with a home-made cake and fun presents!  It was a nice, leisurely day full of eating and celebrating!

I decided that instead of buying a cake, I will make her one.  It will definitely give me more practice!  My mother-in-law is diabetic and I had toyed around with making a diabetic cake (seeing as it's her birthday!), but from what I had gathered online, it seems that most would prefer a very, very small slice of real cake than a sugar substituted cake!  So, I decided to make her the vanilla chiffon cake (as that is definitely less sweet than a lot of my other cake recipes!).  Also, chiffon cake is pretty popular in the Asian community.  You'll find that most of the bakery cakes are chiffon-like.  It's that slightly sweet, soft, spongy cake we all love so much!  I'm usually more confident baking cupcakes, as  cupcakes always bake up right.  Cakes are more troublesome.  I've tried to bake chiffon cakes in a cake pan before, and they never, ever came out right.  So, I'm not quite sure what possessed me to bake a chiffon cake...a chiffon cake in my mom's crappy, tiny oven (barely fits a half sheet pan!), that is overly hot from the bottom!  But I did,  and it actually came out right!  I'm not sure if you remember, but I was cake apprenticing at a Chinese bakery in Pico Rivera a couple months ago.  They started me off doing the filling of the cakes and icing the cakes with whipped cream.  I'm also not sure if you remember, or I ever told you, dear readers, but I suck at icing cakes!  They never come out nicely even and it just gives me grief! And when I interned at that cake shop, the poor owner had to re-ice every single one of my cakes!  Over time, I did get better, but slightly so!  Anywhoo, since I decided to whip up an Asian cake look-alike, I filled the middle of the chiffon cake with half strawberries and half banana.  Then I whipped up some whipped cream and iced my cake!  It didn't turn out that bad, if I do say so myself!  I was pretty impressed with my icing skills (as it's been months since I've iced a cake!)  And it was pretty easy too!  I actually baked my cake, sliced it and filled it, and iced it in a matter of minutes!  I was pretty darn impressed with myself!  I must admit, though, that I thought the cake was a bit under-dressed.  It didn't occur to me to make lines and squiggles (or something!) on the side of the cakes...too late, because I had already dressed the bottoms of the cake already, so couldn't go back and dress up the sides!

All in all, my MIL thoroughly enjoyed her day and was so happy that we all made it out for her birthday!

Happy Birthday Mom!  Hope all your wishes come true and that it'll be a bright and fruitful year! 

XoXo