Thankful - Day 18: Cake

We have a silly tradition of eating only black and orange foods on Halloween night. It's fun for kids and admittedly for adults (or at least me) too. This year I decided to host a second annual dessert night for our MOPS steering team using black and orange as the theme. Basically I just wanted an excuse to hang out with the awesome women. I didn't exactly get it organized by Halloween and my dessert was more brown than black (shoot me) but it was fun all the same. How the cake came to be is quite the story. I blame sleep deprivation. Or hormones. Because everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. First I mixed up the baking soda and baking powder measurements. Then I forgot to add the cocoa powder to the batter and didn't realize it until I was pouring it all into the pans and thought Hmm. I always thought chocolate cake was brown. Then I burnt the first batch of the salted caramel sauce that was to go in between each of the 6 tiers and so had to remake it. Then a few minutes after assembling the tower-o-cake, I opened the fridge to discover the top three layers had literally slid off onto the shelf. I madly attempted to force the crumbling pieces back together by hand, recreating as close to a "cake-like" shape that I could possibly conjour up. I put it back in the refrigerator and returned to check on it every 5 minutes, repositioning  the Leaning Tower of Pisa for the next hour until the caramel sauce had finally set. The finished product was a sight to behold! Here, it might be easier to visualize with a picture:

Yes, yes, a thing of beauty for sure. I almost tossed the whole darn thing in the sink but then I stopped as it occurred to me how the cake was a perfect example of my beautiful mess (not to mention my expert baking skills). Our entire MOPS theme for the year is about embracing our mess and being real when we don't have it all together. I really, really wanted to dispose of the thing, hide my failure and create something a bit more impressive but, totally out of character, I kept it. And posted picture of it everywhere. And even served it to guests!

I slathered it with some frosting (it's amazing what a little frosting can do) and it almost looked OK in the end. My guests were gracious and laughed with me over the drama of it all as we enjoyed thick wedges of the stuff (I gotta say, it still tasted pretty good!) Not to get too cheesy on you but I was struck by how much the cake represents my own life: it may look more or less put together on the outside but inside, it's a 6-tiered landslide of a sticky caramel cake crumbles.

 So...all this to say, I'm extremely grateful for these lovely MOPS women in my life who are helping me learn to be real and who accept me in my crazy mess. So that's my thankfulness for today.

Anyone want the cake recipe? Just kidding!