The Great Birthday Cake Fiasco

The other day it was my husband's birthday. He had an exam up at university in London, which is obviously not the greatest way to spend one's birthday. I tried to make up for this by taking the day off work so that I could prepare him a special breakfast, and then prepare a little surprise party for him at our church house group that evening.

Sounds wonderful doesn't it? Except, nothing in my life is ever that smooth. The breakfast part went well. I served Scotch pancakes with maple syrup, strawberries, and strawberry & champagne cream, which was tasty. The day had started well enough, but then the stresses began:

I was eager to start making the cake so that I could get over to our youth minister's flat to sort out the party related stuff. But because my husband had only an exam and no classes he left later than usual.

When he finally left I got cracking with the cake. I had searched Google Images for science-themed birthday cakes. There were several great ideas, the majority of which amounted to fabulous works of art that I could only dream of ever pulling off. I furrowed my brow, and inwardly complained about my inability to sculpt icing to form a mini laboratory on a cake. Being a creative sort, however, I was not one to give up, and I thought and thought about how I could make a cake look science-y without much difficulty.

Sweetpeas & gypsophila in test tubes!

I planned to ice the cake with the addition of a couple of test tubes that I would fill with brightly coloured jelly to give the impression they were full of exciting chemicals. We bought the test tubes a couple of years ago from a school science website, and used them to hold flowers on the tables at our wedding reception, along with conical flasks of varying sizes. Since then we have not found a use for them, so I thought I could use a couple on the cake.

However, I came up with an even more 'genius' idea, thanks to Google, of making jelly petri dishes. So I prepared the jellies - bright pink raspberry and purple blackcurrant - in ramekins, adding touches of green food colouring and little sweets to hopefully look like something fascinating a scientist would be investigating in a lab. As my husband works in biochemistry I thought I could get away with such a theme. 

I put the jellies in the fridge to set, and then set about baking the cake.I had found a recipe for a double-layered chocolate cake. Seeing as our baking tins are somewhat mismatched I decided to make only one layer of the cake in a rectangular tin, thinking that would be easier to decorate.

The baking part wasn't too difficult, except for being interrupted by a phone call from my mum. However, I was getting behind schedule, and beginning to get a bit stressed. The cake took twice as long as it ought to have done to bake in the oven.

When it was finally done I set about icing it, and then took a couple of the jellies out of the fridge. There was only really room on the cake for two of these, and I had made more than enough in case of mishap. Turns out that was a sensible prediction to make.

I turned two ramekins over, on opposite ends of the cake, and waited for gravity to do it's thing. However, because the ramekins were glass, and because I hadn't considered greasing the bottom so that the jelly would slide out, the jelly just sat there. I banged the bottoms of the ramekins, I put hot water on them, I wobbled them around. Nothing.

In the end I grabbed a knife and ran it round each of the jellies, and they slopped out. One of them looked like the perfect, manky, diseased (yet yummy) petri dish I was going for. The other decided it preferred to be a liquid rather than a solid and it began to escape over the edge of the cake. In a panic I salvaged what I could, and regarded the odd shape it had become. I shrugged, thinking it looked like a very pink and very intriguing giant bacterium that a scientist might gaze at through an electron microscope. It worked for the purpose. It looked like a five-year-old had made it, sure, but it was just about passable as a disease themed birthday cake. Yep, I know how to be romantic...

Then, in something of a stress, as I knew my husband would be back home in a couple of hours, I ran around the house finding the decorations. When all was ready I went to put the cake in a tin to take to our youth minister's flat. And that was where the true disaster happened. I don't know how, but one minute the cake was sitting on the cooling rack on top of the oven, the next it was hanging over the edge, me just managing to stop it falling completely. In painfully slow motion the jellies slid off into a crumpled heap of toxic looking goo on the kitchen floor.

I was too enraged to cry or scream. I just yelled, "No!" and stared in dismay. My rubbish cake was ruined. Listening to my heart thud in despair for a few moments I attempted to come with a Plan B. I considered that as the cake looked terrible anyway, I couldn't possibly make it worse, and there were some jellies left so I could attempt to salvage it. To me, these jellies looked less 'diseased' as they didn't have the touch of green food colouring, but they would work. I was in no mood to go through the whole process again, and in any case there was no time.

This time I left the ramekins on the cake so that the jellies would stay in place until I got to our youth minister's flat. When I got there I explained the situation to her. She thought it was funny and when she took a look at the cake, with the ramekins removed, she thought it was brilliant. I was taken aback, but pleased that I could get away with a disease cake as an acceptable theme, and relieved that I wouldn't have to go out and buy a supermarket cake to make up for my disaster.

Disease Cake!

Grateful, I left her with the decorations, and dashed home to clean the kitchen and remove all evidence that any baking had taken place.

When my husband got home I was calmly reading a book as though nothing unusual had happened. He knew that we were going to have food at house group that evening because it was his birthday, but he didn't know that there would be a surprise party.

There was some left over jelly in bowls, which I explained we needed to take to have with ice cream at house group (because we are all young at heart!). He seemed to believe this, although he was beginning to grow suspicious.

We arrived at our youth minister's flat, and when I pushed him through the front door ahead of me he walked towards the living room with some trepidation. The rest of our house group were in there, and they all yelled, "Happy Birthday!" at him, letting off party poppers and clapping. Our youth minister, who is also a great hostess, had laid on lots of yummy food. The plush red blood cell and cold viruses that I had given my husband for Christmas a few years ago, sat happily amongst the plates of pizza, salads, and cheeses, and the test tubes full of bubbly red and green liquids were on the windowsill above.

I loved the plush microbes lurking amongst the food!

Amazing what you can do with sparkling water and food colouring :)

My husband was really touched, and after we had eaten the food it was time for the birthday cake. His face was a picture as it was brought towards him, "What the...!?" After we sang and he blew out the candles, I announced that it was a disease cake, and then he couldn't stop laughing. Thankfully, he loved it, and it tasted pretty good too! After all that stress and mishap, it all turned out well, hooray!

And the next day I took him out for an adventure at the London Wetlands Centre, but that is for another post, which will be coming soon!

I just wanted to add - thank you my wonderful husband for loving me enough to accept a disease themed birthday cake, for being a geek who loves silly things like that, and just for being you - you are awesome! Happy Birthday again!

Photos my own. First photo taken by our wedding photographer, Jess Foreman.