Happy Birthday Jenni!

So, another gloomy, rainy day is upon us here in San Diego.  And yet again, what better time than to blog another post?  Today, I'm going to bring some sunshine upon us!  Yes, it's another birthday, but once you see these pictures, you'll be just as tickled as I was!  My cousin, Jenni,  had celebrated her birthday earlier this month.  She actually shares the first part of December with her brother, whose birthday was two days before hers!  They had planned a birthday dinner for that weekend, but since I was not able to attend, I thought I'd  bake her a cake and visit her and her kiddos for an evening.

I decided to do a vanilla chiffon cake, since it seems they were fond of those Asian cakes bought from a certain Asian market here in San Diego.  I almost did a taro flavored chiffon cake, but seeing as I didn't really have time for any mess ups, I decided against playing with the cake flavor and went with good old fashion vanilla.  And unfortunately, that day, I ran into more problems and "coulda, shoulda, woulda...but didn't" more than shoulda happened!  (I know, try saying that 10 times fast!).  The first of the "coulda, shouldas" was the whipped cream!  It was a bit softer than I usually make them (these I stole from the donut shop....), so my first instinct was to re-whip the cream to get a stiffer cream.  But I had this bright idea that the almonds would camouflage any unseemingly-ness of the whipped cream.  When I first started icing the cake, it seem to hold up just fine.  But as I iced more and more...I ran into some squishy problems...But there was nothing else I can do.  It wasn't until I had to pipe the border of the cake that I decided to just re-whip the cream.  Lo and behold, the cream actually got stiffer and was something I shoulda done the first time around!  Darn, why do I never listen to my first instincts??  Secondly, when I first started this cake, I was home by myself.  I had a pretty relaxing time, preparing this cake.  It wasn't until I put the ribbon on that my mother came home and all of a sudden, the relaxed atmosphere was gone.  I was suddenly in a rush to get things done and be out of the kitchen.  (Hrmm, my mother has that kind of effect on me...).  Anyways, there was no way to clean off that icing on my ribbon, unfortunately, and so, the cake went with a slightly iced ribbon :( But no matter, when I arrived at Jenni's house, the kids were in awe of the cake.  It was super cute!  Her three boys were so excited about celebrating their mom's birthday and that there was a cake just for her!  Check out Jared:

If that's not excitement, I don't know what is!!  He sat on top of the island and was just shaking with excitement!  Thank God their island is huge and there was no way of him falling off!

We had to do the cake blowing twice.  Jacob got a little carried away and forgot to share the blowing experience with all his siblings and Justin (the kid on the far left) carried on a tantrum because he was too slow in blowing out the candles!  See Justin's tantrum?

Although he was pouting, Justin was just too cute!  If only I had taken a video, you would see that he was just a tad too slow in getting any candles blown off!  And he could see that he didn't blow out any candles either!  So, we lit the candles again and he had another go at it!

Here's Jenni's oldest, Jacob, smelling the flowers that was on the cake.  What a darn cutie!

And, of course, Jared wanted to join in on the fun too...except he decided he'd rather have a lick than a smell!  The kid's enthusiasm really brought out my sense of pride in what I'm doing.  And although this wasn't the perfect cake I had in my  mind, it was perfect, as is, because these kids were soo excited and in awe of a made-from-scratch cake, made especially for their mommy.  And to see that, it really touched my heart, both their love for their mama, and their amazement of my cake.  Don't tell anyone, but I'm making myself #1 auntie with these three ;)

 Cheers!