King for a Day

Remember when you were a kid and your birthday would come around and you would be so excited? It was your birthday, the whole day was about you, your day, no one else's, you were the king. AAAhhhhhh, the glory of it all!

My favorite part of my birthday was, I bet you all are thinking I am going to say the gifts, right? WRONG!!! It was the cake. I love birthday cakes. I really do. More often than not, my mom would make our birthday cakes. It was usually a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and if you were lucky, you would get those sugar letters that would spell out Happy Birthday on the top. My mom was good at these cakes and I loved them. She would put them into her Tupperware cake holder. I think I may still have it somewhere around here. That cake holder still reminds me of birthday cakes.

I do remember a birthday party where my mom ordered a cake for me from Fleckenstien's Bakery, the best whipped cream frosting anywhere, and it was decorated with Strawberry Shortcake on the top. It was gorgeous! If I remember correctly it was a round layered cake, so it was tall, and it had a beautifully drawn, none of those crappy sugar transfers they have nowadays, Strawberry Shortcake on the top. The gel drawing was just perfect and it was super cute. Just what any little girl in the 80's would have wanted and I just loved it. LOVED IT! It came time to sing and cut the cake. Song, check. Candles blown out, check. Everyone crowded around the dining room table waiting for their slice of heaven, check. My mom getting ready to slice the cake, wait, not so fast, no check. At that moment, my mom did something that remains burned in my memory to this day. My mother, on my birthday, during my excitement, my day,  took that huge knife and plunged it into Strawberry Shortcakes heart. Now, I know you are thinking that she was just cutting the cake. NO, this was no normal let's cut the cake. This was a full on slaying. You would have thought she just stabbed my best friend. Instant tears and screaming. What did she do??? How could she do that??? Well, my mother not only did that, she laughed too! Her laughter only enraged me more. More crying and now came anger. I was mad, no, I was pissed. 

I look back at things like this in my life and think, she was teaching me a lesson. What a lesson that was. My mom totally thought that would be funny, little did she know that it broke my heart. The lesson I learned on that day was that I will never do that to my kids, even though I have already done some things to them that they will someday think were a lesson much like this.

This lesson brings me to Logen's 5th Birthday cupcakes. My birthday is in the summer, so I never had the opportunity to bring treats to school on my birthday. I admit, I feel a little cheated, but I'm over it. Logen had to bring treats to celebrate his birthday with his class. Normal treat days the teachers ask that you bring in a snack, that is relatively clean, and drinks for the class, but on your birthday treat day you are allowed to bring in cupcakes or something of the sort. Messes are allowed on your birthday. You are the king remember?

Any 5 year old boy's dream cakes.

Logen, true to himself, chooses worm cupcakes. Not warm, noooooo, you read it right, worm cupcakes. Since he was so excited to be the birthday treat friend, remember king for a day, and my internal scaring still left from the slaying that Strawberry Shortcake took in the mid 80's, I made worm cupcakes.

Here is what I did:
1 Chocolate Box Cake-Logen's request
1 Can of Chocolate Frosting-Logen's request
1/2 a package of Oreo cookies
Gummi Worms
1 drinking straw

Make the cupcakes according to the directions on the box.

Remove them from the pans and let them completely cool.

Dirty dirty dirt cakes, just perfect for worms.

Grind up the oreo's really fine in a food processor. This is what makes the dirt for the worms.

Frost each cupcake, immediately sprinkling each one with the oreo dirt. Now, don't frost them all and then put dirt on them all. That will NOT work because the frosting on the first ones will be dry by the time you get to the dirt. Do them one at a time. Frost one, dirt. Frost the next, dirt and so on.

Once they are all frosted and covered in the dirt, take your straw and poke a hole into the top of the cupcake where you would like to have a worm crawling out, pull out the straw and stick in the worm. Repeat for all worms. We did two for each cake, but there easily could have been three.

That's it! Done! Worm Cupcakes.
Slightly time consuming, but the smile on my boy's face let me know that he really felt like he was the king for that day.