Imperfectly Perfect Birthdays

I wasn’t going to blog about this at all. I was ashamed. I was embarrassed. I was mad.

I’m NOT perfect. Deep breath. I wish I was. But that would be boring and everyone would hate being around me, right? At least that’s how I feel when I’m surrounded by people who do things so much more perfectly than I do.

So the first part of today’s installment is confession.

We celebrated my sister Calley and my brother Corey’s birthdays this past Sunday. Their birthdays are ten days and six years apart and they both wanted fried chicken. Seemed like a plan. Then, disaster.

(This isn’t the embarrassing part yet. This is just what led up to it.)

Mama got sick. Really sick. 102 degrees and shouldn’t be out of bed sick. We descended anyway. Side note: I think I get this perfection thing from her. I mean, really, she should have cancelled instead of believing she’d be better in twenty-four hours.

So I got put in charge of a few things. Like the cake. Another side note: My mother makes perfect cakes. See example below.

Well, obviously I can’t compete with this.

But I thought I could reasonably pull together a pretty good chocolate cake for Calley. After all, last week I whipped out the Pioneer Woman’s Best Chocolate Sheet Cake Ever and it was pretty darn good if I do say so myself.

I intended to make that sheet cake again but changed my mind at the last minute and instead tried a chocolate fudge cake from one of our many cookbooks that we have more for decor than actual use.

Well, evidently this cake is not meant to be made in two round cake pans with the purpose of layering.

Nope, didn’t work. So there I was on Sunday morning, no more butter, an imperfect cake and a failed attempt at making cream cheese icing with Philadelphia cooking cream cheese which, FYI, doesn’t work because the cream cheese is thinned. For cooking. Not baking. Duh, it says that on the package.

This is the picture I took and figured if I did post this would be the view you got.

Gee, doesn’t it look great? Yeah, this is what it really looked like.

It was…a little flat. But it did taste good. I should know. Half of it came home with me and I’m trying to get that plate cleaned off so I can wash it and I hate to see good ingredients go to waste….

I also made this for my brother. Nothing like pre-packaged assembly. Well, I did have to mix the cream cheese and whipping cream. And of course my mom had the perfect cream cheese because she would never make such a mistake.

Actually, I’m sure she’s messed up plenty, but I don’t remember it because she somehow makes things work anyway. Maybe one day my girls will feel the same about me.

Here’s a preview of our Sunday afternoon at Paynes-a-Plenty. Picasa slideshow to come if I can figure it out.

48 pieces of fried chicken….

Loving the swing.

Well this looks good at least.

Happy Birthday Calley!

This so captures the moment. I think I was telling Corey that I didn’t want to hear about the chicken if it wasn’t done because that’s what microwaves are for.