It will be OK!

It’s OK! Ok! Alright!

You know when you have screwed up on something, the positive reassurance that it will be ok pops into your head, its ok!

Well this weekend, it was quite the adventure in baking a birthday cake for our friend Tianne. Every step of the cake, has a story, ending with, its ok!

Kate and I started our day with a trip to Amani ya Juu (http://www.amaniafrica.org/about.php), we had planned to go there for lunch, and check out the goods in their store. It was amazing there, check out their link for what they do, and what they are all about. It was the great escape from the busy month that we have had here. So from there, we thought that we would bake a cake for Tianne’s birthday, so we headed to the store, bought a few ingredients and headed to Kate’s place.

Well once we got to Kate’s place we started to look for a recipe, Kate could not find one in her place so we went down to her friend’s house, Ruth. Apparently Ruth is an amazing baker, so we grabbed a chocolately goodness, eggless recipe for a splendid chocolate cake. The plan was to make a layered cake.

While we were there, one of the boys from the compound had to show us the baby bird that was there, so we went down to see it, it was so very cute. Caleb was excited to take pictures of it, and then I asked if he had named the bird, he was like no we can’t name him. But then he decided that we would make a storybook about the bird to take back to the States with him.

Well, by then we needed to get the cake started, so we made our way back to Kate’s house and started on the cake, Caleb, tested the batter, and said that it tasted dusty, but that his fingers were dusty, so he washed up, and came back to lick the bowl out! Caleb ended up with cake batter all over his face, shirt, and sleeves. I hope his mother was ok with us giving him sugar!

We then moved on to the icing…well the icing…was a little more of a process, poor Kate could not get the right consistency, it was turning out like fudge. So, we made our way back down to Ruth’s house, the icing saver, who rescued us. Much to the entertainment of the three ladies we passed on the way there, laughing at the two single ladies with an icing emergency!

So, by then the cakes came out of the oven, we waited for them to cool and popped them out of the pans.

Everything was going well, up until the popping.

The popping process…was not as easy as it sounded. The popping sort of came like a process of freeing a trapped cake inside the pan, it was firmly planted in the pan protesting its removal. Once it did come out…it rather resembled a crumble. With more crumble then cake formation. It was beyond trying to piece together and look pretty! So then we started on cake number two, to see if we had better luck on the second one. No such luck, it was unbelievable. Ok, perhaps it was believable, well I then went into crisis mode, wondering what we could do with two crumbled cakes. I thought of a trifle, but we didn’t have whipping cream or pudding. Then we thought of an upside down cake, with the icing on the bottom and the broken cake on top.

Then…the Garden Birthday Cake idea was formed.

This is how you make a Garden Birthday Cake:

Step 1: Place icing on cake, as normal, no worries if it doesn't look perfect.
Step 2: Chop cake up into many pieces, and naturally let it crumbled.
Step 3: Pour crumbled cake into a fancy bowl
Step 4: Decorated it, with flowers and candles.
Step 5: Serve to birthday girl, acting like all is normal and that you and you are really creative friends that formed a brilliant creation, that we named it the Garden Birthday Cake.

It was truly unique!

Tianne loved it, and it tasted great, it was a great afternoon of laughter, worried that the cake was ruined and a fun evening celebrating Tianne’s birthday.

It was a great weekend overall, it was great to see Kev as he passed through on his way home to Canada. Yes, I got to make fun of him like good ole time’s, I think he secretly enjoys it. Then he had to share his “last night I had the strangest dream”, which then I had to share mine, Kev why oh why did you have to share that??? Just kidding! It was great, even the "walking in the dark" experience, I looked the next morning when I was walking down and seriously, there were no street lights, so me falling in a ravine would’ve been quite possible, thanks for keeping me safe. I also got to see all the obstacles that I nearly killed myself on, funny in the daylight…they were all extremely smaller than they were in the dark. Thanks for the fun adventure, to top it off my taxi forgot about me, or thought that I wanted to be picked up the next morning, so I got to visit with the gate guard while I waited for him.

I also, may have accidentally found a ministry. Yeah, bizarre, but when I was telling Kev, he wasn’t surprised. So anyways, last week I had thought that the singles at church something was missing, a gathering or a ministry of sorts. So I emailed a guy at the church that has been around there for a while, OK, his dad is the Pastor, so I said that we need to plan something for the singles, not knowing the logistics of what works, the needs of the church, or if something similar had been done and didn’t work I looked to him for feedback, I gave a him a few ideas that might work. I was appointed on to the Singles planning committee, I was like I didn’t know such planning committee existed, he had just formed it. Sunday, he planned a meeting with the singles, there were a dozen of us, to announce that I was on the planning committee, and that we are going to come with our ideas next week over lunch. Funny thing is that he mentioned a retreat, yes a retreat…you know who got a little too excited!

Anyways, that was my weekend, it was a little fun, a little adventurous and great all in one, last night I attempted to make bagels again, and just amazed at how easy they are.

Here is to another fun week!