Growing in to Grown Up

Prune Cake, Margaritas, and Other Birthday Highlights | June 23, 2009

What were the highlights of my twenty-fifth birthday, you ask? Of course…I’d love to share a few.

 1.)    Everything’s Better Wrapped in a Tortilla
Eating the world’s most perfect food twice in one day: Tacos. Yes! I had grilled Cajun chicken tacos for lunch! And THEN got to have Cali-style shrimp tacos for dinner at my favorite restaurant in all of Nashville!  Lunch was great, but dinner was fantastic. Three of my favorite Nash friends, two meals of my favorite food, one perfect patio, and zero dollar margaritas courtesy of Colt the cute bartender.

 2.)    Let Them Eat Cake
In my 20-person department we have 3 birthdays this week. We usually order a cake for the birthday boy or girl on their day or the Monday or Friday closest and celebrate as a department. Well, with 3 birthdays, we decided having cake on Monday, Tuesday & Friday seemed a little excessive. So we’re having ALL THREE CAKES TODAY.

One girl chose a peanut butter cake, I wanted the Snickers cake, and the third requested A PRUNE CAKE. No joke. Turns out, bakeries don’t really make them, so I volunteered. Yes. I baked a prune cake. For someone else. On my birthday. And it was only kind of mildly disastrous.

 First of all, I’ve never even heard of prune cake – I’m chalking this up to it being a southern thing? So a very Yankee girl baking an old fashioned southern cake pretty much guarantees that hilarity will follow.

 Second of all, I just guessed when it came to the “Cook and mash pitted prunes” part of the instructions. That was interpreted as “buy pitted prunes, boil for a few minutes, and then put into the margarita/smoothie maker (the closest we have to a food processor) and attempt to chop.” Hmm.

 An hour and fifteen minutes after carefully following the instructions and putting my creation into the oven, a delicious spice cake type of aroma filled the apartment. Good news! It smelled great. It looked good. A baking success? Not yet.

Prune cakes? They’re baked in bundt pans. And I’ve never cooked a bundt cake. The roommate instructed me to turn the cake upside down over a glass before shaking the cake out onto a plate. Well apparently, I greased and floured that pan perfectly, because as I turned that cake onto the glass, the cake shattered into 4 pieces around the glass, right next to my heart.

I tried to put the cake back together as well as I could, used some toothpicks to hold it together as best as I could and smothered it in glaze. It wasn’t pretty, but I guess it tasted good, and it was appreciated. And now I can say I’ve made a prune cake.

 3.)    Special Delivery
Aunt Leslie was always the one who would send the weird care packages in college. T-shirts displaying monkey genitalia? Check. Magazine articles about the prevention of having your one of your kidneys removed from you while at frat parties with the intention of having it sold on the black market? It’s happened.  Post cards with mildly inappropriate “art”? You bet. They were sent straight to the sorority house. So when Aunt L asked for my work address a few days ago I hesitated just imagining what embarrassment she might have in store. Singing telegram? Special work day birthday serenade by a local musician? I really wouldn’t put it past her. Perhaps a cake delivered with some sort of “surprise” message? I worried all day and was relieved to receive a beautiful bouquet of flowers and some balloons.

 4.)    Warm Wishes
Many thanks to all of my wonderful friends & family for all of the birthday wishes, phone calls, text messages, facebookings, cards, etc. you really made 25 extra special! Thanks to Tyler, Joey, Herschel & the Brians for drinks & laughs at South Street (which I love! Great choice!) & Flying Saucer and  going out in muggy Tennessee June air and the pouring rain to celebrate with me. Y’all are the greatest! Cheers to new friends & new years.