Happy Birthday Alyssa

Last January, I flew to Southern California for a family event in Woodland Hills. At the event, I had the pleasure of meeting a cousin of mine whom I’ve never known very well. And I was really sorry about that, because it turns out she’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s confident, and she’s funny. She’s also 7 and her name is Alyssa.

I happened to sit next to Alyssa at dinner that night, and I happened to mention that I like to bake cakes. This girl doesn’t miss a thing, because she replied without a moment’s hesitation that her birthday was coming up in August, and that she would very much like a birthday cake from me. I said sure.

And then I went home, back to my life and my blog and my piles of graduate school homework, and I forgot all about our sweet little conversation. Alyssa apparently did not forget, because a few weeks ago she called me up and–all in one breath–gave me the address of her rock-climbing birthday party and then placed an order for a blue and yellow birthday cake with blue and yellow flowers.

I did not have the heart to tell Alyssa that her party fell the day after the end of my first term final exams, and that the only way I could possibly bake her the cake she desired would be to get up at 5 in the morning and bake and decorate the whole damn thing from scratch, all in one exhausting marathon, daybreak baking session.

No, I could not tell her that. So got myself up at 5 a.m. a few Sundays ago and that is what I did.

Before the sun had even risen, I had baked a quarter sheet cake from scratch, made 4 cups of bavarian cream filling, and whipped up a double batch of buttercream frosting. I rolled out and carefully cut about a cubic foot of blue fondant, piped a couple of dozen icing roses and made the loveliest, floweriest birthday cake a 7-year-old could dream of.

So here are pictures of the finished masterpiece. Blue and yellow flowers were what Alyssa wanted, and blue and yellow flowers were what she got. She loved it.