Happy (un)Birthday to Me!

Despite the fact that I hate birthdays, I think everyone should have a birthday cake. No one likes getting older, but everyone likes cake, so I think everyone is entitled to their very own cake one day a year. Perhaps instead of birthdays, we should implement Cakedays. Not to be confused with Cake Days, of course.

Since I spent my actual birthday managing the Hotel Liz, attending a wedding, and belly dancing at a Hafla, I decided I'd use last week's Cake Day to make my own birthday cake. As an added bonus to my adventure, I got to test run my swanky new official baking apron and matching oven mitt that Alex too generously bestowed upon me for my birthday. Funny, I feel this project is slowly taking over my life... my gifts this year consisted of a KitchenAid mixer, a fancy KitchenAid bowl scraper attachment, and an apron and oven mitt set. It's nice to know people are on board, at least.

The recipe this week was a Jamnesty torte, which is an adaptation of a cake served on the Orient Express during its prime. Dr. Robinson made it in honor of a concert fundraiser her was daughter managing that weekend for Amnesty International, which they called Jamnesty. Her recipe adds a layer of blackberry jam between the layers of the flourless chocolate cake. I, however, was unaware of this, so my cake, sadly, was flourless and jam-less.

It was much less in many other areas, as well, I think, because it requires chocolate and almonds to be ground together in a food processor. Unfortunately, I only have Baby Food Processor, a small, free, mostly-gets-the-job-done food processor not meant for such tasks. Although I pre-crushed the almonds with a hammer and towel and cut the baking chocolate into smaller squares, Baby Food Processor was quite unhappy with me, and it took constant readjusting, several pauses to let the smoky smell subside, and much coaxing, singing, and kind words to convince Baby Food Processor that it was up for the job. The final product was a chunky mix rather than a fine powder, resulting in a cake that was less cake and more crunch. Not in an unpleasant way, just a much different texture from what I think the cake should have had. My chocolate buttercream frosting, however, was perfect. (I will add that few things in life are more satisfying than watching your KitchenAid mix up buttercream frosting.) And although I was slightly disappointed with the results, Tim said it was probably his favorite cake yet. (Also notice his Dramatic Angle photo of the cake cutting.) I'll admit, it did taste pretty excellent, jam or no jam.

Dr. Robinson also discusses in this chapter that we can often feel like we are trying to hold onto a planet that is spinning too fast, almost out of control for us. She compares it to feeling like a bacterium in a centrifuge, spinning at 10,000 times the force of gravity. I feel like one of those bacteria now, both in the short-term and the long-term scheme of things. In the short-term, I'm in the middle of almost three weeks straight of house guests, trying to keep up with laundry and cleaning. There's also the prepping for Thankgiving, the shopping and baking. And I'm putting in extra hours for dance and trying to make something, anything, happen at work, all while thinking about dissertation writing, graduating, and job applications. I feel exhausted, like I'm just trying to push through each day, one more step, until the still-undefined day when things will slow down. In the long-term, I'm now 26. Do you remember how old that seemed when you were in grade school, high school even, and writing all those completely ridiculous assignments about what you wanted to be when you "grew up," or the list of things you wanted to accomplish in your life, or where you saw yourself when you turned 30? Where are the house, the husband, the kids, the impressive career I wrote about in those assignments? Did anyone's life turn out like the one they wrote about in the 7th grade? No one dreams of being a single graduate student renting an apartment 700 miles from her family. And yet, here I am, and I don't even feel mature enough to be here. I don't feel as old as 26-year-olds seemed when I was 16. I feel like there is still so much I need to accomplish, but time is passing way too quickly. The whirlwinds of short-term and long-term meeting creates quite a dichotomy: each day feels long, but each year flies by.

Anyway, I'm glad I took some time out this weekend to bake a cake to celebrate me, and to share it with friends. For a little while, the crazy spinning slowed, and I could enjoy the here and now. I think that, in general, we don't do that often enough, we don't pause to take a breath and take it all in. We should do more dancing, more yoga, more sleeping in, more chatting with friends and family, more cake baking and cake eating. Maybe that would help life feel less like a centrifuge and more like a carousel. Wouldn't you rather ride a shiny pink pony than be stuck to the bottom of an eppendorf tube with millions of bacteria?