Somebody around here is turning 43 tomorrow, and it isn’t me. No, I’m the birthday boy’s incredibly young wife, who spent yesterday baking a chocolate cake from scratch, and a lemon icing to go with it.
My usual birthday routine involves a cake mix and a tub of store-bought frosting, and while I’ve always liked both of those things just fine, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what is in all of those convenience items we buy, and feeling that it might be nice to make a cake with real ingredients.
I went local where I could, and organic wherever else possible, and I’ll tell you, the cake itself was delicious. The icing, on the other hand, was more like a glaze. It sunk into the cake, and not everybody appreciated that. I liked it, though.
And so, apparently, did the ants today.
Here’s a little tip for you: when you’ve been seeing big black ants in the kitchen, even if it’s just a half dozen here and there over the course of a few days, don’t leave a chocolate cake with lemon glaze out on the counter loosely covered with foil. Because, chances are those half dozen ants will invite a hundred friends over for their own party starring your cake, while you stroll none the wiser through the very photogenic streets of New Hope, PA buying trinkets and wishing you’d remembered your camera.
Blech. Nasty.
Creepy crawlies aside, we had such a nice weekend, filled with a few friends, some family, a spontaneous road trip, and a sink full of dishes. A party just isn’t a party unless you have no room left in the sink by bedtime, don’t you think?
We constantly fight ants. I keep seeing one or two in the bathroom on the floor in front of the toilet. (Of course I’m a captive audience at that point) I found that Terro works really well and it’s not toxic for humans and animals. It’s just boric acid in a sugar syrup. Discount stores and hardware stores carry it. The sugar attracts them and the boric acid causes internal bleeding. It kills the whole colony by getting rid of the queen.
Anyway your cake looks yummy, sorry you didn’t get to eat it all.
I think dishes breed like rabbits. Where do they all come from?
.-= See Marty’s latest blog post: Our Weekend =-.
I think I owe my husband an apology for dismissing his suggestion of re-making my lemon icing with Borax as a way to attract and then kill the ants. I scoffed and told him Borax was a laundry detergent, not a pesticide. Oops.
Way to go on the homemade cake. I set a goal to stop using packet mixes a few years and haven’t looked back. Homemade tastes SOOO much better and is much healthier. Plus there are lots of simple recipes around that don’t take much longer than a packet mix. Hope hubby had a great birthday.
Libby
.-= See Libby’s latest blog post: Hooky fun =-.
I think the worst part of baking without a mix is gathering all of the ingredients. That has become a lot less painful since I cleaned out and organized my baking cupboard. I’m a lot more likely to follow a recipe if there are not flours and sugars falling on my head every time I open the cabinet
😀
Everything I bake is always sealed inside some sort of cake plate or Tupperware (or similar) container. Ants aside, it keeps it fresh longer.
That would be the smart way to go… I do that sometimes, or I stick it in the fridge. This time, though, there was half a cake left. I put half of that in the freezer for future breakfasts, and the other half, I figured we’d polish off quickly the next day. Totally forgot about the ants.
Yummm Chocolate Cake with Lemon icing! It is my 43rd birthday in two weeks. Will you make me a cake too? I am getting tired of making my own cakes. (Store bought just will not do.) I will make sure the ants don’t get it!
Sing Happy Birthday to your husband for me and congratulate him for marrying such a young chick! 🙂
.-= See Cindy Lietz, Polymer Clay Tutor’s latest blog post: Polymer Clay Tutorial | Gerbera Flower Cane | Assembling the Pieces =-.
I completely agree! Unless I was incapacitated in some way, my kids and husband have never had a store-bought birthday cake. I, on the other hand, rarely have a cake at all for my birthday.
I refuse to make my own 😉
Have a Happy!
So, in the “wow, that’s ironic/funny/full circle” category, for one of my dad’s birthdays, we brought a huge hunk of cake that your mom had made home. It was on the counter loosely wrapped in foil. I came home from school, and I heard a strange noise, like something humming/moving. I zeroed in on the cake and low and behold, it was COVERED with carpenter ants.
Long story short, my father had been ignoring my mentions of ants for a very long time, and they found essentially that one of the posts at the front of the house was infested, and we had to replace that and do a lot of fumigating.
All from cake baked by your closest kin.
I think perhaps this is a family thing.
Discuss.
Well, it certainly is easier to blame heredity than to think I was stupid enough to leave the cake out when I knew we had a few ants hanging around.
So yes, it must be a family thing 🙂