Villiam’s birthday cake

My friend Villiam had a birthday on Wednesday, but spent that day with his family, so we decided that today would be a good day to make his birthday cake. He came over this morning around 11, arriving just as I had finished making a soup and salad, so we ate that, then discussed what sort of birthday cake he might want. Since he likes pretty much all cake he had problems narrowing it down, so I dug out an old cookbook that I stole from my mother when I moved out of the house (and she probably took it from hers when she left home) a 1947 masterpiece called “Learn to bake, you’ll love it!”, with an introduction that starts with “Whenever a woman says she loves to bake, you can feel mighty sure that she knows just how”. The book is a great display of science, speaking of the importance of careful measuring, and explaining that “Many stoves have oven heat controls. These regulate the flow of heat and keep the oven at a steady temperature as long as the heat is on.”, but it also goes on to explain the importance of having a reliable oven thermometer.

He flipped through the book, and was inspired by a photo of an Angel Food cake that had been baked in a loaf pan, a wedge cut out of the middle, the middle filled with a blend of whipped cream and slightly mashed raspberries, and the wedge cut into triangle slices and tucked back into the cream and berries.

That was enough inspiration, but we decided that since Angel Food is kinda tasteless, we would do a fluffy cake with a bit more flavour:

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This worked really well. I enjoyed one slice, and he had two. Then we played the piano a bit (he tells me “press these four keys in this sequence, at this speed, over and over”, and I do, while he plays something more interesting). After that we went for a walk on the property. He had never looked into the earth cellar in progress (still haven’t done anything for it this summer, and, given that it is August already, I don’t know if we will this year), so we started there, then climbed on the rock pile, and went down the the bottom of the property, right to the water’s edge, and on the way back towards the house we stopped to climb on on the big rocks we could find (we have many nice rocks on the property!) and looked into the forge shed, since he hadn’t seen that either. We went back into the house when it started raining, and this time we played with the dulcimer. I demonstrated a few songs that I know and he tried to find songs that he knows how to play on the piano, which went pretty well. Then we played together. This time him finding a set of chords he could play with one set of hammers while I did some random improvisation with a handful of strings that would sound good with his chords. It was much fun!

Then it was time to head to Phire practice. It was still raining, and I didn’t think that it would be a good idea to transport the glass cake plate and dome on bike, so I drove him and the left over cake back to his apartment and put it into the fridge there, and then we went to practice. At practice we did some acroyoga, he taught me a trick with the short, one end fire sticks (without fire, of course), they taught me how to spin plates on a stick, and a bit of juggling happened. Then, since I had my car there we drove the Phire pavilion over to Florian’s house for some after Visby Medieval Week maintenance (it has been in the Phire storage room next to where we practice since coming home from the event on Monday), then he went off to his D&D session and I came home. With luck I will now spend the rest of the evening working on Durham stuff.