A Surprise Shower for Maureen

Top secret events and reason for Cake of the Week switch revealed!

As most of you who actually read this know, Tim and Maureen are getting married this spring. But since they're planning their wedding long-distance and their family is somewhat spread out, Maureen is missing out on some of the complete bride-to-be experience, like bridal showers. Her mom decided this was unacceptable, so she enlisted me to help out with a surprise shower. She gathered gifts from family and sent them down here to me (which was a massive ordeal in and of itself... apparently my apartment complex doesn't understand mail delivery), and I organized the girls here for the party.

Our theme was a traditional tea party, so we all dressed up, Tim provided finger foods (including the most delicious cucumber sandwiches ever... kudos to him for his extensive research on tea time), and Maureen's coworker got her out of the apartment under the guise of pedicures while we set up. She was definitely surprised when she walked in. I think that's the most gratifying part of a surprise party: the look on the guest of honor's face when he or she walks in to a room full of people yelling "Surprise!" is always some priceless combination of confusion, excitement, and a little bit of pure terror. It was awesome.

We enjoyed tea and snacks, watched while Maureen opened her gifts, and of course played an obligatory ridiculous bridal shower game (who comes up with this stuff?) involving making wedding dresses out of toilet paper. I was actually quite impressed with the dress quality... we should have been featured on one of those Bravo shows or something. We may have had only toilet paper, but we certainly did "make it work."

My contribution to the shower fare was Japanese Green Tea Cake. For the Robinson family's Year of Cake, this cake was Dr. R's, birthday cake, made by her youngest daughter. The chapter is full of the sort of melancholy people like me feel around their birthdays. A deep reflection on life, and if the best parts are already gone, and if we're up to what lies ahead. I'm pretty melancholy myself right now, with the second half of a PhD project falling down around me and in what seems like an endless quarter-life crisis. (Maybe that means I will live a long time?) A good time to remember that "where there is cake, there is hope." And thankfully, for Dr. R then and me now, there is always cake. There's no time or place for melancholy during pre-wedding festivities. But there's always time for cake.

This cake is as green as red velvet cake is red. A bit terrifying, actually... I'm not sure something that color should be ingested. Unlike red velvet cake, however, the green color is completely natural, created by the addition of matcha, or green tea powder. An elusive and expensive ingredient, I managed to find some at the Farmer's Market, and thankfully, a little goes a long way, because my tiny container nearly cost me my left hand. Although I'm not sure what I'll do with the rest of it. I have no idea what it's used for other than this cake. I guess I could just make a lot of cake, but then I'd probably need to buy some chickens, because other than green, the cake is entirely eggs and air. I had to whip 4 egg whites, beat together 6 egg yolks and 4 whole eggs, and then mix together both egg mixtures. Crazy. I suppose it's healthy, though, with all that protein. Or that's what I'll tell myself. There was so much batter (and I may not have had an appropriate pan) that I made two: one for the shower, and one tiny loaf cake for me. The cake was served with a ginger dessert sauce, which soaked right into the airy cake. It was interesting and different, and went well with our tea party theme.

Successful cake, successful shower, surprised and happy bride-to-be... all in all, a great Cake Day.