Volcano Cake

When I was younger, I used to love birthdays! My mom’s, my dad’s, my best friend, Vaishaka’s, (maybe not so much my sister’s, because she was my mortal enemy,) but most importantly, mine. I loved the whole concept of birthday parties, everybody getting together to celebrate me! And my mom always went the whole nine yards, balloons, streamers, big dinner, all of my friends over at my house, presents, and (being the sweet tooth that I was,) a big cake that was usually shaped like an animal covered in buttercream frosting. I was the kind of kid who would pull out her diary right after the party got over, to start the countdown to her next birthday, sometimes forgetting if the year had 365 or 366 days. 

As I grew up, it’s not like my enthusiasm for birthdays just faded away. It left the building, bought a one way ticket to the Andamans and decided to live a new life scuba diving in the reefs while they still existed. In my early twenties, it was the fear of turning older that made me hate birthdays. I still loved going over the top to celebrate others’ birthdays, but for my own, all I wanted was to stay locked up in my hostel room, having a mug of crisp, cold beer with my roommate and best friend who didn’t really question my hatred for birthdays. Today, birthdays for me, are just a constant reminder that yet another year has passed and there are so many more things that I wanted to do. It’s usually New Years that propagates such introspection, but since my birthday falls in December, it’s just a blue month. Add in the cold of Winter and it’s a party that no one can resist. Ni has now taken over the duty from my roommate to help me spend my birthdays with nonchalance.

A few days ago, however, I caught a glimpse of my childhood as I went to the birthday party of my friend and colleague’s kid, an adorable bunny who loves educating me about dinosaurs everytime I meet him. My friend had asked me to bake the cake for him and gave me free reign, except for the birthday boy’s theme, DINOSAURS! I couldn’t really disagree with the little man there. 

“I’ve not really made any themed cakes before,” I warned her. 

“You just make your usual brand of ‘less sugar’ and I’m sure it’ll be yum.” 

She was definitely much more confident than I was in my abilities, and for that I’ll forever be grateful. She’d given me more than a month’s notice, but as the days passed by, my brain froze each time I tried to think of a design. My pencil tapped against the paper leaving nothing but small pock marks. As I came close to the two week mark, I had an image in my mind of what I thought the cake should look like, but I was still unable to convert it into a sketch. Every time my mind drifted, I could see the cake floating about like an island, tempting and teasing. After a rabbit hole of “How to sketch wedding cakes” videos, I was finally able to put down a sketch that didn’t make much sense, but if I squinted real hard, I could see my vision. A few modifications later, I got down to the task of writing down the recipes for each of the components. Some three pages later, my anxiety hit hard. I was moronic to have been thinking that getting the sketch down was the hardest part, everything else was muscle memory. There was a smoking volcano, the dinosaurs, trees, shrubs, rocks, water, sand, and other elements that I kept adding and removing every five minutes until Ni put his foot down and asked me to settle on a list. I, of course, distracted him with a debate on chocolate ganache vs. buttercream frosting for a realistic looking lava. 

The week before the birthday, I hit a new level of babbling-nervous. At work, I talked my friend’s ear off about the details of the cake. 

“I’m wondering if I can make fondant dinosaurs, although I do hate fondant work,” I pondered out loud. 

“Keep it simple. I’ll buy some toys and we’ll keep the kids from eating a huge lump of sugar,” she said. 

“Fair enough, but I’m still gonna use fondant for leaves.”

“If it works for you,” she said with a smile. 

I had my schedule for the week all set. Monday after work was to hunt down a cake box big enough to fit what I had in mind. Tuesday before work was to go hunting down dry ice. Wednesday after work was doing a shopping run to pick up all the ingredients that I’d need. Thursday and Friday were dedicated to getting all the elements ready so that all I had to do on D-day was to make fresh buttercream frosting and assemble the cake. As long as I stuck to the plan, I had nothing to worry about and this was going to be a smooth sailing experience. All I had to be anxious about was the cake, nothing else. And that was the good kind of anxiousness, the kind that pushes you to give it your all. 

On Monday afternoon, I started the car in my office parking lot and I heard a loud rattle and as I backed out of my spot, it felt like the whole underbody was on the verge of kissing the engine goodbye and doing the old tuck n’ roll! I parked on the side to check underneath, but it all seemed okay. On the way home, I noticed that my air conditioning wasn’t really doing much of a job to cool the car down and just as I was  blaming the record breaking heat, the engine overheating light blinked. Here was my first lesson for the week, to quote my husband, “When your engine is overheating, for the love of God, stop by the side of the road.” I, like the novice driver that I am, drove all the way home and have now permanently scarred my husband, for all that he dreams about are warped head gaskets that will leave us stranded in the middle of nowhere should we travel more than 5 kilometers. I stood in front of him like a disciplined child, my mind already jumping five steps ahead and wondering how we’d deliver the cake. Then it hit me, it was going to be a week of going to work and running errands with no car. Obviously, the universe saw my perfect plans and decided to rain on my parade. I sulked in my kitchen for the next few hours, refusing to rethink my plans with childish stubbornness, but then I thought about the kid without a cake on his birthday and told myself, “Like hell that was going to happen!” 

While Ni heated up the phone lines trying to track down his mechanic and the tow company, I called every super store in the area trying to find dry ice. I gave up on that quest and started tracking down all the other components that I had to pick up, like the gloves to handle the dry ice, a square pan for the cakes, cake boxes, and a worthy birthday gift. 

On Wednesday afternoon, I did my shopping run as originally planned, walking back home with the heavy bags. 

On Wednesday night, I sat icing my arms and back, the grandma that I am. 

On Thursday, I made my fondant leaves and set them aside to dry. I nixed my idea of making chocolate rocks from scratch and picked up some Hershey’s cookies and cream minis. Then, I ordered my dry ice from the internet like any self respecting soccer mom would have. 

On Friday, I made the four cakes that I’d need and also a batch of cupcakes from the leftover batter. 

Friday evening, I was feeling good about myself. Despite the tumultuous start, I was still on track. 

Then, my husband entered the kitchen. He’d just finished his day of running behind the mechanic to check the head gasket (while he was pulling down the whole engine to fix the water pump) and I made him sit down at the kitchen counter while I ran over my plan the next day. We argued over logistics, accuracy of nature, height of volcano vs. dinosaurs, height of trees vs. dinosaurs, there were venn diagrams and flowcharts, white board discussions that finally led to me pulling out the cold, wrapped cakes to show him what I meant. And thank god for that discussion. We realised that I needed two more cakes to make sure that the volcano towered over the rest of the land. So, at 10 pm on Friday night, I baked two pans of my go-to chocolate cake, waited for them to cool, wrapped them up and put them in my fridge. 

As we dragged our tired bodies to bed, I told him to keep the loudest alarms as I wanted to start the day super early. I really needn’t have worried. Adrenaline was coursing through my body in a mixture of anxiety and excitement, like somehow I was facing both a competition and an exam at the same time. As I do when I have an important train or flight to take, I kept dreaming that I overslept and now Vidur had no cake. 

“Why did you not bring my cake with you?” he asked with such soulful eyes that broke my heart. 

I was up in bed before the day broke and ready to get started as sunlight brightened the room. I queued up the music in the kitchen and started on the frosting. By the time Ni was up, the cakes were ready to be assembled. I waited for him to amble down and confirm that it did indeed look like a mountain. 

“Phew,” I thought to myself. “Worse comes to worst, at least the kid will have a cake that resembles a mountain, if not anything else. It can only get better than here.” 

As Ni buzzed around the kitchen, offering suggestions, time checks, nourishment, and helping me clean up as I went, I stuck to the time table I’d prepared for myself and put the large cake in the fridge after its first crumb coat. When I added the second coat and the water, it looked like a scientific cross-section of land (which then derailed Ni and me as we went down a discussion of how I should make scientific cakes.) 

Adding the trees was a little complicated, as the fondant wasn’t really sticking to the pretzel sticks (that I was using as tree trunks), or it was sticking a little too much. I’m really not meant to do fondant work, I think. I look back to the dainty bees that I made for cupcake wars during college and honestly wonder how I managed to pull them off. Ni joined in the fun and made a non-complicated shrubby tree that looked waaaay better than my silly colourful palm ones. But, in they all went, the shrubs, palms, et all. 

For a little added greenery, I used all the chopped up parts of the cake, mixed in some green colour and sprinkled them on the base of the mountain and for the beach line, some sandy graham crackers. I wanted to make some green ‘cake in a cup’ to be  another variant of greenery, but real estate on the cake was fast disappearing and I needed the space for the dinosaurs. Finally, I melted some white chocolate in warm cream, added a whole lot of red and poured down the lava, watching it gently roll down the mountain. 

The cake was done. We carefully lowered it into its box and cleaned up the kitchen before heading out. For the first time, in- I can’t remember how long-I finished an order a couple of hours before the delivery time. I actually had the time to shower and wear decent clothes and not just shirts covered in icing sugar (which is my usual look when delivering cakes.) I felt exhilarated. I was exhausted! 

My exhaustion, however, felt absolutely justified as I watched all the kids run towards the cake, the birthday boy squish the lid of the cake box to take the first peek, the many many swipes of the the buttercream frosting before the cake was even cut, the ooh and aahs when the dry ice swirled around the hole in the volcano (although I was terrified that some kid would want to touch the extreme cold ice,) the immediate deforestation that happened between the time the cake was kept on the table and the single, lone candle was lit, and most importantly, the sugar rush that poked at their parents’ sanity. 

I may not like my birthdays, but I realise now, there is another kind of excitement in making a young one’s birthday a little special.