Birthday Cards

I had a good birthday. I got some solid gifts.

I got a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting from Two Fat Cats Bakery. My dad noted admiringly, "It tastes like a giant Funny Bone." True. A giant, delicious, handmade Funny Bone. I didn't put it in the fridge like last time, either.

I had some delicious, low-carbonation craft beers with friends at Gritty's. I hate carbonation.

I avoided all the storms while biking.

And best of all, I got some awesome handmade cards. Here's the card my sister made me (don't forget to click images to embiggen them and read the fine print):
My mom made me Ninja Turtles cakes when I was young, but I never got a "totally rad birthday 'za." Probably for the best.

My sister said she deliberately hid the hands and feet here since those are the features that give her the most trouble. I pointed out that that's true of professional comics artists, as well. Either way, she did a nice, subtle job of hiding the deformed extremities. I rate this card Totally Tubular, dude.

For purposes of comparison, here's a card I made for Stasia's birthday last year:

Sorry if that made you spill your coffee or gave you nightmares. Hopefully it's large enough that you can read the text, since that's much better than the image. I like the card in general, but I don't know what I was thinking when I drew that crazy-eyed close-up. I'll have to redo it with my improved mspainting skills, so as not to pervert the minds of innocents.

And here's a simply incredible card Stasia drew by hand and held up to her webcam so I could see it:

Whale done. (If you don't get that joke, try saying it the way Stasia would now: with a British accent. {And if you don't like that joke, kiss my blowhole.})

Cake Fake-Out

Good birthday cake is hard to come by. For my mom's birthday I thought about trying to make one, but I haven't done cake for a long time. I probably would have needed a test run, and it was too short notice by the time I thought of it. On that note, let me know if you need a test cake made. Maybe for a friend whom you don't really like. Or for a dog's birthday. Or a school bake sale. Kids will buy anything with their parents' money.

So instead, my dad and I headed into Portland to check out Two Fat Cats Bakery. It occupies prime real estate, practically sandwiched between the fantastic Italian grocery store Micucci's and the decadent Duckfat restaurant. I had never even noticed Two Fat Cats, set back as it is, but my dad had and was surely a fan.

As we stepped inside, I was smitten: you go down a few steps and straight into a kitchen, basically. This main area is cozy, not too big but open so you can see all that's going on: cakes and cupcakes being frosted, fruit being peeled for pies, many wonderful aspects of baking that might normally be hidden away. I'm a fan of these set-ups where you can observe and admire the process behind the delicious product.

The employees were terribly friendly and obviously enjoying their work. One even humored me with a laugh and a "That's what we aim for!" when I suggested that a cake looked "good enough to eat," which I'm sure she had never heard before. Don't take me out in public.

We took home an 8" chocolate cake with chocolate frosting -- or should I say chocolate frosting with chocolate cake? Seriously, here is a bakery that understands when I ask for a "cake" it's only because polite society considers it rude when I inject frosting directly into my veins. "Cake" is about pushing the laws of structural engineering to their limits in order to find the largest possible ratio of frosting to non-frosting-material. The cake is a lie: frosting is the truth.

That's why frosting is so important. You need thick, rich, gooey buttercream frosting, and lots of it. And this cake has frosting: I promise you there's more frosting than cake involved here. Here's where it all started to go wrong, though: for some reason I thought that, as with most foods, cakes needed to be protected from the detrimental effects of heat. I forgot that cakes are impervious to harm, protected as they are by thick frosting shields (and thick plastic cake covers, just to keep stray cat fur off).

I admit it: I put the cake in the fridge (for its own good, I told it). HUGE mistake.

Never put the cake in the fridge! Even hours after we took it out of the fridge, the frosting was still too hard. You do not want your frosting hardening unless you're making some kind of Ganache or maybe a scale model of Mount Everest. So when I had a piece of cake last night, though the taste was amazing, the texture was off. It was just too hard and slightly waxy. I couldn't understand how it had gone so wrong.

Thankfully the cake is also big enough that my mom was able to rescue it. She left the cake out on the counter overnight (covered, of course...don't need any stray cat fut or deep cat paw prints in it, despite the bakery's name). What a difference. Today the cake was perfect. The frosting had warmed to its optimal temperature and softened to its ideal consistency. Frosting delivery system is a go!

I only wish the Two Fat Cats' website had a picture of their logo, because it is worth seeing. I promise I'll start taking pictures again soon. Until then you'd better head to Two Fat Cats yourself and come by some good birthday cake. Otherwise you're gonna end up with a Callaghan test cake, which belongs in an ACME catalog.