Cakes

Best friend Lisa stayed with me this weekend while Christopher went to Norfolk to visit his parents.  Best friend Lisa came to help with a very specific activity –  cake making. 

We weren’t just making any cake, we were experimenting in order to find the perfect  cake recipe that we will use for Christopher’s 60^th birthday party in May.  Having committed to making a cake large enough for 75 people I thought I’d better have a test run, and Lisa is the only other person on the planet that can work alongside me in the kitchen without winding me up / getting in the way / taking over / arguing with me or just doing things wrong.  The cake is going to be very special.  I can’t say more than this as it is a surprise so I don’t want Christopher finding out, but suffice it to say it ain’t just a chocolate cake, we had to design and build the cake and consider some very complicated icing requirements.  It took the whole of Saturday afternoon and evening and most of Sunday too.  The dogs sat, watched and salivated throughout proceedings.    Lisa took regular breaks to watch the rugby and we also consumed rather a lot of red wine – which may explain why the cake baking took so long.  Once finished we took photos, so we have a prompt to help us when we repeat the process in May.  Alarmingly having just completed our task Christopher arrived back from his trip having not warned us of his impending arrival.  We had a frantic moment as he walked up the garden path hiding the cake in my study and disposing of any cake-like clues but by the time he walked into the kitchen we were sitting calmly with a cup of tea as though nothing had happened in his absence.