Author Jennifer Fromke shares today’s Cooking Calamity–a cake from the heart!

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My favorite birthday cake also happens to be one of the biggest kitchen disasters we’ve seen at my house.

We discovered the most fabulous cupcakes at a place called Magnolia Bakery on 6th Avenue in New York City. Call me unadventurous, but the vanilla cake with vanilla icing is to die for. I experienced this divine dessert with my two daughters on their first trip to New York and it was a perfectly magical weekend.

When my birthday rolled around a year later, my girls (13 and 15) decided to surprise me with the exact recipe from Magnolia Bakery. To jazz it up, they decided to make a layer cake instead of cupcakes and to color the filling between layers in my favorite color: aqua.

Well, I knew what was happening in the kitchen, and they slaved away for hours, creating the perfect cake for me. Here is a photo:

The layers continued to slide apart after this photo was taken. And if you look closely, the filling color turned out to be a shade of green that oozed out between the cracks, giving the cake an “alien eruption” sort of feel. We laughed and we laughed and we laughed.

When my husband arrived home from work that night, the girls showed him the cake with great pride and seriousness. He tried very hard not to laugh, because he didn’t want to hurt any feelings, but the girls burst into laughter before long, letting him off the hook.

The reason this was my favorite cake is not the laughter it brought along with its sliding layers. It truly tasted INCREDIBLE! I loved this vanilla cake with the perfect crackle icing, savoring every bite. I almost felt like I was back in New York City eating my favorite cupcake from Magnolia’s . . . but only when I closed my eyes. Beauty comes from within.

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bio:

Jennifer Fromke was raised in Michigan, but writes from North Carolina today. She’s a lover of words, mother of three, and wife to one extraordinary man. While not writing, she can be found, latte in hand, laughing with her family or driving her kids all over the place. Her debut novel, A Familiar Shore, won the ACFW Genesis award for women’s fiction in 2010 and placed 2nd for book of the year award at http://www.bookfun.org. Most recently, she had a short story published in the short story anthology entitled Heart Bouquets. She authored one chapter of The Christmas Tree Treasure Hunt, a Christian novella. Originally published in serial form via blog hop, it’s now available in digital format here at Amazon. Special Delivery, a Christmas short story was her first publication.

You can find her book, A Familiar Shore, on Amazon: