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Mama’s Birthday Cake

Mama’s birthday was coming and Lily wanted to make her something special this year. She couldn’t decide what to do. She dug through the basket of fabric scraps hoping for inspiration.

She had already tried making a pot holder for Mama. It hadn’t turned out very well. Besides, Mama had plenty of good pot holders and didn’t need more.

Lily put the fabric basket away again. She’d have to give this more thought. Maybe tomorrow. For now, Mama was calling to Lily from the kitchen to help her clean out the cupboards.

Mama had pulled out all of the cookbooks and stacked them on the floor. “Put the ones we don’t use often in a different pile,” she told her. So Lily sorted through the cookbooks and found one she hadn’t seen. It had a glossy cover with a picture of a layer cake on the cover. “Cakes for All Occasions,” it said in big red letters. Lily leafed through it, fascinated by the pictures of beautiful cakes.

She was suddenly hit with inspiration! She was going to make a beautiful birthday cake for Mama. She finished sorting the rest of the cookbooks and put them back into the cupboard. When Mama had gone upstairs to check on baby Paul, Lily grabbed the cake cookbook and ran with it to her bedroom. She tucked it in her top desk drawer. Tonight she would look through it and choose the cake she wanted to bake.

That evening, Lily lit her oil lamp and changed into her nightgown. She pulled out the cake cookbook. She wasn’t at all hungry after a big dinner, but still, her mouth watered from the pictures. She paged through it slowly, looking carefully at every cake. Most of them seemed too hard to make or needed ingredients that she knew Mama didn’t have in the pantry.

And then she found it: A beautiful marble cake with two layers and covered with lots of swirled fluffy frosting. She read the recipe several times to make sure she would have everything she needed and would know how to make it. It didn’t sound very hard. This was the cake she was going to make. She rummaged through her desk and found a bookmark to save the place in the cookbook. Now she would have to figure out some way to make the cake without Mama finding out. She blew out the light and hopped into bed. She felt happy as she snuggled under the covers. Mama would be so pleased with the beautiful cake Lily was going to make for her.

During supper the next day, Mama took a bite of brownie and yelped. “Ouch!” She held her cheek with her hand.

“What’s wrong, Rachel?” Papa asked.

“It’s that tooth that’s been bothering me,” Mama said. “But it’s much worse today. I should have known better than trying to eat a brownie with nuts.”

“I’m going to make an appointment with a dentist for you before I start work in the shop this afternoon,” Papa said. “I don’t want you having to suffer from a painful tooth.”

Lily felt sorry that Mama had to go to the dentist. Nobody wanted to go to the dentist. But then she realized this was the opportunity she’d been looking for! She could bake Mama’s birthday cake while she was at the dentist.

Papa came back from the phone shanty. “You have an appointment for tomorrow afternoon at four o’clock,” he said. “Mr. Tanner will be here to pick you up after three thirty.”

The next day, Lily hurried home from school, hoping Mr. Tanner wouldn’t be late. She kept glancing out the window to see if she could spot Mr. Tanner’s car coming down the road. By the time he arrived, Mama looked around the kitchen. “Lily, put the casserole in the oven at five thirty. I’m going to drop the boys at Grandma Miller’s until I get back.”

That was wonderful news! Lily wasn’t sure how she would get the cake baked if she had to watch Dannie and Paul. She waited until she saw Mr. Tanner’s car turn onto the road, then ran upstairs to get the cookbook.

She read the instructions for the cake recipe: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lily opened the door at the bottom of the kerosene stove and pulled the tray with the burners out to light them. She tipped the chimneys back and turned the wicks up. She took a match, struck it, and held the flame against the wick. As it traveled slowly around the wick she tried to lower the chimney gently. It got stuck and Lily jiggled it like she saw Mama do often. All of a sudden it went down fast and snuffed the flames. Lily tried again. The same thing happened. After several more tries she gave up and ran down the basement stairs and into the shop.

Papa was working at the drill press, drilling holes in the back of a chair seat. Lily explained that she was trying to bake a birthday cake for Mama and that she couldn’t light the burners for the kerosene stove. Could he please help?

Papa went upstairs and lit the burners. Lily adjusted the flames until they were burning a nice blue flame. Now she could finally make the cake. She showed the picture of the cake she wanted to bake to Papa. “It looks good,” he said, patting Lily’s shoulder. “If you need any more help, just let me know.”

Papa went back to his shop as Lily gathered the ingredients. She measured flour and sugar into the mixing bowl. She glanced at the clock and was bothered to see how much time she had wasted in trying to light the burners. She was afraid she wouldn’t have enough time before Mama came home.

She finished stirring the batter. It was time to add the chocolate swirl into the batter to make it seem like a marble. She read the instructions and decided it would take too long to melt all the chocolate. She decided to pour the chocolate chips into the batter without melting them first. They could melt while they were baking. She thought this might be a brilliant idea. Every chocolate chip would melt into its own pretty little swirl. The cake would be filled with dainty swirls. It would be even prettier than the one in the cookbook.

Lily could just see Mama cutting the cake, oohing and aahing at how pretty the swirls were and asking Lily how she did it. She was sure Mama would be pleased with her swirl invention. For good measure, Lily added an extra cup full of chocolate chips to the cake batter and mixed it well.

She slid the cake pan into the stove and set the timer to make sure she would remember to take the cake out of the oven in time. It would never do to burn Mama’s special chocolate swirl birthday cake.

Hurry, hurry, hurry! Lily glanced at the clock. She quickly washed the baking dishes while the cake was in the oven. She didn’t want to leave a trace of her surprise. Then she paged through the cookbook again. In the back she found all kinds of frosting recipes. Lily read the different recipes and one caught her eye: Lemon Icing. Lily read through the instructions and thought it sounded even easier than plain old butter cream frosting. She measured powdered sugar into a bowl, added lemon juice and stirred. Instead of getting fluffy like frosting was supposed to, it looked thin and watery. She was trying to figure out how to fix it when the timer rang.

Lily quickly removed the cake from the oven and put it into the refrigerator to cool before Mama came home. She read through the icing recipe again to see what she had done wrong but she had done exactly what the recipe had told her to do. She sprinkled more powdered sugar into the bowl and stirred. The frosting was still too thin.

So Lily decided to add food coloring. If the frosting wasn’t going to be fluffy, at least it could be pretty. She dug through the pantry until she found the box with the food coloring. On the back of the box she found instructions on how to make different colors. It looked easy! You just added different food colorings together. Lily decided on a beautiful purple frosting. It would be the prettiest frosting ever.

Lily measured in red food coloring to the lemon icing, then added blue. Instead of turning purple, it turned into a sickly orange-brown color. Lily felt like crying. All her wonderful plans weren’t working out the way she had hoped.

Then she heard the crunch of tires on the gravel in the driveway. Mama was home! She grabbed the cake from the refrigerator and the bowl of frosting and ran upstairs with them. She sat on the floor in her room and poured the frosting on top of the cake. She tried to spread it out nicely but it turned into an orange-brown puddle in the middle of the sunken cake. Finally, Lily gave up. She put the cake into her bottom desk drawer and hid the dirty mixing bowl in her closet.

“Lily,” Mama called up the stairs. “Did you remember to put the casserole in the oven?”

Oops.

Supper would be very late tonight.

Three days later was Mama’s birthday. At the supper table Papa gave Mama a big box. Lily watched eagerly as Mama opened it because Papa always gave good gifts. Mama drew out a pretty towel set. She stroked it happily. “Thank you, Daniel,” she said. “It’s just what we needed. It will look so pretty in the bathroom.”

When it was time for dessert, Papa said, “I think Lily has something for Mama’s birthday now.”

Lily ran upstairs and got the cake out of her desk drawer. The sickly orange frosting looked even worse than it had when Lily had put it on the cake. She carried it downstairs and gave it to Mama. “Happy birthday, Mama,” she said, a little uncertainly.

But Mama looked so pleased! She cut a piece for everyone. Joseph and Dannie, who normally ate everything, picked at it with odd expressions on their faces. Papa tried one bite and froze. “Lemon icing? On top of a chocolate chip cake?” he said, as if that might be a strange combination.

Lily was disappointed to discover the chocolate chips hadn’t melted at all. They still looked like chocolate chips instead of pretty little swirls. And because she had added so many in the batter, the cake was crumbly.

Mama didn’t seem to notice all the mistakes, not even the disgusting color of the icing. “It’s so nice to have a daughter big enough to bake a cake by herself,” she said. She finished her piece of cake and then said, “I think I need a second helping,” and cut another piece.

Mama never had second helpings of dessert. Not ever. She must have really loved that cake recipe. Lily thought she might make it for her every year.