It's (was) my birthday, and I'll (laugh until I) cry if I want to

Yesterday, it was my birthday.  There was no angst or worry associated with this day.  It is not a "special" year, as far as notable birthdays go.  36 is neither young nor old,, in my opinion, but as all good birthdays must, it includes cake. 

Now, I like cake.  Actually, I really like cake!  In fact, it is one of my favourite things.  I love eating them, admiring them, reading blogs about them, and making them!  I have a lot of fun decorating cakes, and have made a lot of them over the past two and a half decades.  Almost all of them, and that's a LOT of cake over the past 25 years, have turned out superbly.  Sure, there was the time when I was 10 or so, and my younger sister and I were home alone for a short while after getting off the school bus, and I decided to make a white cake.  (One of the staple recipes in our house - a lovely old recipe of my paternal grandmother's with an accompanying brown sugar sauce that has measurements like butter the size of an egg.)  Except, this one just didn't seem right, after all the ingredients were mixed in.  It was all dry and crumbly, and I remember wanting to throw it away, but knowing that I shouldn't waste, so I made my sister eat it.  I pretended to help, but really, she was a good girl and went to work removing the evidence.  Luckily for her stomach, our parents came home, and when Mom checked what we were doing, and I 'fessed up, and asked what went wrong, she gently pointed out the milk that was not added, written on the side of the recipe, squeezed into a third column of her old recipe scribbler.  Ooops.  Sorry, sis. ;-)

There was a new recipe that I tried, once, that just didn't work, and for the rest, everything has turned out.  (Except for one cake for the boys' birthdays this past spring, but that was a failure to eject from the pan, event.) Mocha cakes topped with chocolate-dipped almonds, checkerboard cakes, strawberry shortbreads, angel food and chiffon cakes from scratch... Nothing is off limits.  (Although, I really don't care to fuss with cupcakes.)

Here are some examples of past cakes:

This year, I bought a magazine with some great recipes in it, because of the super-cute monkey cupcakes featured on the cover.  (Riley's classroom theme this year is monkeys, plus, that's pretty much his own personal mascot.)  On the page facing the recipe for the monkeys, was a lovely, delicious looking three layer chocolate cake, with a lovely white filling in between the layers, and gently topped with a chocolate glace.  So, I tried the new recipe, and the cakes didn't rise properly.  I persevered, thinking, it tastes great, at least. (I sampled the broken bits.)  I did, indeed, follow the recipe exactly, but, alas, this is what I ended up with for my cake this year:

See how it resembles a leaning tower of something chocolate in origin...

I added the glace to the top, thinking, like icing, it would cover all manner of misshapen cakes.   Yeah, not so much! LOL!

But sprinkles fix everything, right?  *snicker*

The candles were still lit, the children were excited and sang me a raucous Happy Birthday song, I got to blow out the candles, and we enjoyed eating the cake, aptly christened "Mud Slide" by Riley! 

At the end of it all, a pretty happy birthday!