Mother's Day 2012!

Every year for Mom's Day, I've made it a tradition to make breakfast for my mama. If you haven't figured out by now, baking things for people is one of my most favorite things to do, and who better to do it for than the woman who birthed me??

Through the years I've done pancakes, baked eggs, fresh fruit parfaits, and some sort of drink featuring Agave juice, which was a bit strange and not very delish. This year, I once again decided to do pancakes. I tried to go a bit healthier route, and make whole wheat pancakes. I often substitute applesauce for oil in my recipes, so I felt like that would be a great idea for my pancakes. I didn't feel  comfortable substituting all of the oil with applesauce, so I went halvsies. Was it a good idea?

No, absolutely not.

The first few stuck to the griddle, and didn't seem to be cooking properly in the middle. I cooked them as much as I could, added a bit more oil to the batter and tried a few more. Those turned out a LITTLE better, but I still new that they weren't my best. Mom, being the wonderful mother that she is, still said how WONDERFUL they looked and tasted and she ate a few. Being made out of whole wheat, they were pretty hearty cakes and each of us could only handle about 2. I thought they had a pretty good taste, but they just looked SO weird!

Mama's "special" cakes

Even though I wasn't happy with this culinary excursion, I wasn't going to let that get me down, because I had BIG plans for a cake, which I'd build later that afternoon. My Ron Ben Israel "inspirashunnn" was this lovely cake, which you will probably see at my wedding someday:

Completely adorable, right?? YES! I just think it's the most precious thing in the entire world, and I decided that the colors would be perfect for mom's day! So I baked my cake, adding lemon and a little yellow food coloring to one layer, and then strawberries and a little pink food coloring to another layer. The layers turned out super moist and lovely, and smelled wonderful baking. I decided that buttercream frosting would be too heavy, so I went with a mixture of vanilla pudding and good ol' fashioned Cool Whip. Nice and light for a warm, almost summer day! Easy, right?

No. Not at all. I guess the morning's pancake fiasco should've warned me that the rest of this day would not go smoothly.

The first problem came when I began to build the cake. For some reason, a few of my layers turned out smaller than the other ones. I don't know WHY I didn't just make extra batter and make all the layers even. Or I could've just made 3 thick cakes and cut them all in half with my cake leveler. Both are great ideas, but I did not do them. Needless to say, that first layer was very tiny, and probably not the best support for the rest of the cake. And the "frosting", although yummy, was kind of like slippery basketball shorts-if you've ever sat on someone wearing those, you slide right off. Probably not the best choice for a 6 layer cake.


But I kept building, and then a baker's worst nightmare happened-one layer broke in half.

REALLY?? After ALL that I have gone through today, THIS has to happen??

Yes, yes it did. But I kept on going, determined that come hell or high water, I was going to build this darn cake. (At this point, I might have said a few choice words...just being real). I finally got the entire thing built, and this is an aerial view:

The calm before the storm...

The real problems arose when all was assembled and the weight of the cake really began to bear down on the other layers. It was my middle vanilla layer, poor lil' guy. Here's a side view...the good side, that is:

The storm draws nearer...

You can image the calamity that's about to ensue.

Instead of a peaceful "presenting of the cake ceremony", it was more like: "MOM! Hurry up and get your butt in here before this dang cake falls on the floor!!" Really touching, I know.

It's a bit painful to recall this incident, so I'll just let the pictures do the talking.

I don't know if she was pretending to eat it, or screaming because it was starting to gangsta lean.

Precious mom.

Definitely fake smiling as my cake crumbles before my eyes...

The first and fatal cut.

And the cake came tumbling down.

As you can see, it was a day full of baking mishaps for me, and my perfectionist side was weeping uncontrollably. But when it comes down to it, this day isn't about the presents or the food, it's about celebrating a very special woman, the one who gave me life. The one who still occasionally does my laundry (even when I tell her not to), and the one who cleans up after our cats. She does so many selfless things, I can't even begin to name them all. More importantly, in recent years, she has become one of my dearest confidantes, and I love any time that I get to spend with her. I suppose I really wanted this day to be perfect in order to thank her, in a very small way, for all she's done for me, but I think she really and truly appreciated the effort I put into everything and had a WONDERFUL day.

Thanks, mama.

-xoxo