I planned with Kim's mom to organize a simple get together after she finished working, from a week in advance. I immediately set out on designing the cake and decided on a Shiva lingam with an Om and a personalized happy birthday greeting written Hindi styled, as she is a very religious Hindu and many of our days of school included us chanting "Om Namah Shivaya" in the back of the classroom.
The last cake I had made for her was five years ago; a double layer eggless chocolate cake with blue frosting (her favorite color). I wanted to bring back that memory as well. So I settled on a double layer eggless chocolate cake, filled with whipped cream, frosted with buttercream frosting, and decorated with cherries, cookies, and candy coated chocolate, which suited the cheerful, playful, often childish aspect of her personality.
Kim's birthday was a huge success! Her whole family loved it and her excitement lasted for hours and hours, even after hubby and I left after 10 PM!
Next was hubby's birthday, less than a week after. I had had a meeting on Kim's birthday, and my next meeting was on hubby's birthday, where another project was due as well. Again, I prepared ahead of time. As hubby is a huge Manchester United fan, from the first few days of April I had decided on a sketch of the Manchester United badge as the top of his cake.
I just needed to hope that as they were in some champion's league or the other (my schedule was too busy to remember and hubby had no idea any of this was going on until he saw the cakes) ManU would keep winning and stay on top. As each game went on closer and closer to the actual day, I held my breath and indulged myself in my work, holding my breath, waiting for him to announce whether ManU had its game on or whether my idea for the ManU cake would fall through.
I put blind faith in ManU (hey, if hubby goes crazy for them and Beckham played for them, I LOVE them!) and decided that I didn't need to worry. They would pull it off and hubby would reach his birthday knowing they were champions. I divided my time between focusing on work and focusing on the cakes and acting normal (I am a brilliant actress for things like this - or so I hoped).
I remained totally neutral for everything, got excited as I normally would have, got sad as I normally would have and so on. Earlier in the year though, I had snuck in questions of hubby's birthday cake preferences and he had specified that all he wanted was an all chocolate birthday cake, if so much. BUT I wanted to do a ManU cake, and I thought he would like it just as much as a chocolate cake.
Still, it was the one thing he wanted, and I told him I would "try" (hahaha) to work it in but I had something totally different that I wasn't sure he would like, but I was willing to risk it. So hubby was clueless (I'd like to think so) and kept asking what on earth I was doing throughout with the vague knowledge that I would possibly be making two risky cakes or one half and half cake he would probably dislike. i gave him quite a lot of hints to throw him off track.
Why did I tell him anything at all? So he would actually stay inside and gave me time to work in "secret". I wish I didn't have to kill any of the surprise, but I live with my husband, and hiding the preparations for two cakes can be tricky that way.
I did ban him from the kitchen and especially the fridge for days on end though, and he was more shocked than I expected when he finally saw the cakes. The ManU cake was eggless, double layered, chocolate, filled with red and yellow buttercream (ManU colors), and frosted with buttercream. The entire cake was frosted in green as I made it a football field with red lines and yellow corners, and around the cake I wrote "Not arrogant. Just better. Happy 27th Birthday [Hubby]". On top of the ManU badge, which was not the neatest work I had done, I put in a big "27".
As for hubby's highly anticipated chocolate cake, it was a single layer, chocolate, eggless, frosted in chocolate buttercream with chocolate syrup, drizzled with chocolate syrup, sprinkled with chocolate sprinkles over hubby's name, splashed with hubby's favorite color across the top, filled with carefully cut maraschino cherries across the top, and decorated with whole cherries and cookies around the edges.
Everyone that tried both cakes loved it! A satisfying turnout for all three cakes :) And I aced every interview and had all my work done for every meeting :) And hubby was indeed so surprised he was repeating himself and took on the appearance of "Ralphie getting his toy gun on Christmas Day" (I'd like to think). AND in even better news, Manchester United won the Premier League just days before his birthday and created history by doing so adding to their record (as hubby said). They are now facing off with Barcelona in the finals for the Champion's League. All missions were indeed accomplished!
