Helping my dad bake a cake

My dad is not always the most romantic guy.  He doesn’t always seem to know how to show his love.  I do know that he loves my mom a great deal in the way he worries about her and takes care of her.  As I mentioned in my last post, today was my mom’s birthday.  She turned 58.  They’ve been married for 34 years now and by this point, presents aren’t a huge thing anymore.  My dad is also on disability due to his epilepsy, and has been unable to drive since before I was born.  He has to do his shopping online or depend on one of us to either take him shopping or shop for him.

This year, he became determined that he wanted to bake my mom a cake for her birthday.  He said that he wanted it to be chocolate cake with chocolate icing.  I said okay, and went and bought a Betty Crocker milk chocolate cake mix and milk chocolate frosting for him.  He was also insistent that he wanted sprinkles on it.  Sprinkles of different colors and shapes.  So I got him sprinkles.  My mom also likes those sugar candy cake decorations and her favorite color is pink, so I got her some in the shape of pink hearts.  I figured he could use them on the cake, or we could just give them to her.

Last night, after my mom went to bed, the elves went to work.  I didn’t do much.  I washed out the casserole dish for him that he wanted to bake the cake in.  My mom had made scalloped potatoes earlier that evening – let me tell you, it’s not easy to get baked-on scalloped potato goo out of a casserole dish!  I also set out the eggs, oil, etc. that he would need and left him to it while I went to catch up on the last few weeks of True Blood episodes.

I have to say it was just the cutest thing ever!  Every few minutes he would come into the living room and ask me a question:  “Is this right?  Will you take a look?  I think I got it all mixed enough, would you check?  I think I need your help.  The icing is taking the top of the cake off.”  Honestly, it was adorable.  He wanted to do such a good job for my mom.

He admitted that one of the reasons he wanted to do it for her was that he had made her a cake for her birthday not too long after they got married.  He thought that was the last time he had tried to make her a cake.  He said that that cake had kind of puffed up a bit too much in the middle. 

He sprinkled his sprinkles on the cake and he also got creative and put the candy hearts in two groups on the cake.  At first I thought that he had just made a pretty design, but then he pointed out that the first group had five hearts in it and the second group had eight (for my mom’s age – 58).

I also took him last night to pick out a card for her.  He seemed a little unsure about which one to pick, so I left him alone for a bit.  When I came back, he showed me the one he had chosen and said something about how it was more him than the other cards.  Simple and straight forward like him.  He seemed to not be sure whether my mom would like it or not.  I read the card and knew immediately that she would adore it.  He was right in that it was very straight-forward, but sweet, saying that he was glad and thankful that he had picked the most wonderful woman to share his life.

I have to admit that he did a pretty damn good job with the cake and the whole thing was incredibly sweet.  I was proud of him and I think my mom was very happy this morning!

I’m going to have a piece when I get home.  I’ll let you know how it turned out!