For the Love of Cake

I have a thing for cake. I think this may come from my early years of cake deprivation (thanks dad), but there’s something so decadent and lovely about cake that it is the perfect celebratory thing to me. In fact, I’ve even written a picture book about cake because I love it so much. 

We decided to get some We Made It To Portland and We’re Still Alive cake from the famous Papa Hadyn’s home of the ginormous cake case, but what I didn’t realize was that it not only does dessert, it does dinner and kind of schmancy dinner at that. So we schlumped in all sweaty from our hike there (we took the long way up the hill and back down for this view:)

 

wearing our Hanging Out on Sunday Hiking Up Mountains clothes. Everyone was there in their Out to a Fancy Dinner clothes so we tried to be unobtrusive and blend in by the cake case while we got our boxes to go.

I thought we had gone unnoticed, but no! On the way out, there was this preppy guy dressed in a lime green polo shirt (I know — lime green???). Barrett had already slipped out but the lime green polo shirt guy definitely noticed me. He looked right at me and I thought maybe he was going to complain about the riff raff they were letting in, but that wasn’t it at all… instead he gave me the Eye! Not the, wow, you look like you should be grabbing tacos from Pepino’s down the street (which we actually did — the dress is casual and the food is awesome!), but in a hey there, baby, kind of way. Seriously.

You may doubt that I know the Eye, which I can totally understand as I can be a bit dense about things and I’ve had issues spotting the Eye in the past. I may have even ended up on dates that I thought were friendly study sessions and had to quick run for the door when I finally realized what was going on. Actually, I had this happen so many times in one semester as an undergraduate that I spent my last day of class in the set shop avoiding eye contact with several other members of the class lest they get the wrong idea again. This made it difficult to ask anyone to pass me a hammer. But because of these unfortunate incidences my Eye Spotting Skills have increased greatly since then. Here’s a video of what the Eye looks like for proof. You need to imagine that I’m a pompous, preppy guy in a lime green polo shirt.

See! Apparently, when you are sweaty and underdressed there is no hiding from the Man, no matter how much you want to. At least it wasn’t to get the business about not being quite up to the standards of the establishment, but still… it was definitely not the under cover operation I was going for.

Despite the schmancy people and the polo shirt Eye Giver, the cake case was everything I dreamed it would be. Layers and layers of cake of all different kinds, many of them chocolate, some of them chocolate with a twist, all fluffy and creamy and wonderful.

The cake itself was to die for. 

I hope you’re having a wonderful cake-filled week!

Bridget

p.s. Barrett took the photo of Mt. Hood at the top of our street and put the caption on it — doesn’t it look like a postcard?

9 replies on “For the Love of Cake”

  1. LOL! OMG, Bridget, you are too funny. I started laughing so hard when I watched The Eye video that my husband came over to see what was so funny. He read your post and cracked up, too!

    Great photo of the mountain, but the video? That takes the cake! 🙂

    PS I plugged your blog on my latest lj post.

  2. What kind of cake was the gray-blue one? By the way…Joanne C. asked when you wanted your cake . She decided she is going to deliver it in person…..Glo

  3. Hi Bridget, This is going to be the strangest blog reply evar, but c’est la vie.

    My name is Erin Korus, and I’m the kindly gal who sold your father his Scamp camper. I got an email from him the other day, and I figured that I’d better confess that I’ve been lurking on your blog for a while now. What can I say; I’m a bit of a clam.

    I’m a writer, like you. Although my day job up until recently has been videogame design. I recently finished writing my Master’s thesis for an MA in English. Ihave to defend it still, but it’s a relief to been finished with the writing of 100 pages on the connections between videogames and war. Yeah, it’s about as fun as it sounds.

    So now, I’m writing a novel (adult fiction) and lurking on your blog. Oh, and I love cake too. I live in Seattle, but Portland is something of a crush.

    Send me an email sometime, and we can start sharing some writing or what have you.

  4. I’m so glad you and your husband thought it was funny, Judy! On a second watch, I realize how lucky I am to have a s.o. because I don’t know how much luck I’d have with The Eye myself. Thanks for plugging my blog and for saying that my idea was brilliant! Woo hoo!

    For the record, Joanne C. still makes the best chocolate cake ever! No Portland Patisserie compares.

    Erin, I’m so glad you put up a comment! My dad told me all about the Scamp camper adventure. I’m a huge blog lurker too — I always think, oh, I’ll comment next time. And then I never do. I’ll definitely e-mail you!

  5. While I have to agree, that a piece of really good cake (I mean it has to be REALLY good) is to die for, I’m more of a pie person. I have a strong belief that the world is divided into two different types of people…cake people and pie people (kind of like cat people and dog people). It’s not that one is better than the other…just different. I mean, to me there is nothing better than digging my fork into into a large slice of coconut cream pie…I’m almost drooling as I type this. That being said…I had an amazing cake at my wedding…and we were seriously thinking about having a wedding pie instead of cake.

    Well good to read about your cake exploits and I also laughed at the “eye” video.

  6. That looks like a container of raspberry sauce to drizzle on your very chocolate cake. Nothing better.

  7. I can’t believe this! I’ve just finished eating a tangy-fresh mini cheesecake, and now my mouth is watering for rich, gooey chocolate cake! A lovely torment…

  8. Good morning, Bridget-You probably won’t remember me nor my daughter, Sharla, but we met about 28 years ago. Mary Johnson who lived at Lake Minnesuing connected your Mom and me as our daughters had a commonality; you both had hemangiomas on your noses. You had yours repaired as a toddler and Shar had hers done at 10 y.o.; that’s when you and your Mom came to our house so we could just compare notes about big purple noses on beautiful girls. Needless to say, Sharla survived the ordeal.

    Over the next few years I would occasionally see your Mom on the street and we would greet and exchange the usual. Though we were just casual acquaintances, your Mom’s courageous battle with cancer touched my heart and her death was so sad.

    Now you have touched my heart again though we are just acquaintances from years ago. I saw the “cake” poster at Ole’s store and was so saddened to hear that you are now fighting your own cancer battle. Now Sharla and you have something in common again-cancer. In May she was diagnosed with breast cancer (ductal carcinoma in situ); she only needed a lumpectomy and then 5 weeks of radiation and 5 years of Tamoxifen (med for estrogen sensitive breast cancer). She has finished the radiation and need only return to doc for followup mammograms. She was blessed that the cancer was caught early. Praise God!

    This is the second time our immediate family has been touched by cancer. Our son, Bart, was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2000 and lost his battle a year later; he fought a courageous battle through chemo, major surgery, and 2 stem cell transplants in that year. We miss him so much still but his spirit lives on in our hearts. Like you he had this wonderful sense of humor that still crops up frequently in our family get-togethers.

    Enough babbling. Just hang in there and stay the positive person that you are with a great sense of humor. I’ll remember you in my prayers that God will give you strength and comfort and that remission of the cancer will occur. God bless you.

    Sincerely, June Johnson

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