Adela's Cake. (May 2001)

When Adela was a young girl, in the mid-1980s, she had a birthday cake shaped like the then-popular character named Strawberry Shortcake. She'd mentioned it a couple times in passing, and I thought it would be a neat idea to make it and surprise her with it. I tracked the pan down on Ebay and quickly outbid everyone else. The instructions that come with the cake are fairly simple, and other than the time-consuming process of putting on all those icing stars, it was a breeze to make. And fun to boot. I was worried at first about the strawberries on her hat, but everything turned out just fine.

When she saw it, let's just say she was surprised. She took a polaroid of the cake to send to her mother. Lots of people who saw it in her office kept waiting for her to cut it, but she took it home to show her housemates, and they devoured it together over the weekend.

Adela does not "do" photos, so I have none of her with her cake. Alas!