The 'Tail' of Two Cakes- the manz birthday!

The clown cake

The Crack Cake



Clown cake with coco damage-

Today is the birthday of the beloved Manz- and thank-you to all who sent cards!  (I am the loser who did not manage a card... ) Anyway- we headed out to the farm for birthday dinner.  As usual, it was good- country ribs, meatloaf, peas, beans, corn, sweet potato souffle (for me!), biscuits and cake.  His mom brought out the top cake- candles ablaze (the manz is old enough that we have switched to numbers instead of individual candles.  No fire hazards for us!) and we all sang.  The cake was chocolate chocolate, and covered with polka dots and clowns.  (You know the song- from the 60's- He's a clown, that Charlie Brown) anyway, it was beautiful but there was a twinge of disappointment from the manz.  He had been expecting a crack cake.

Crack cake is southern-style chocolate cake, which is not chocolate but a yellow cake with homemade boiled chocolate icing.  Traditionally it has several layers, with the icing between each layer.  The icing is put on hot enough to be liquidy, then cools to this marvelous thin, super chocolate, slightly crunchy fudgy goodness.  The way his mom makes the cake, she usually ends up with the top part cracked by accident- thus the name crack cake. (It is also super addictive).   This time she had an icing mishap - and also misplaced the third layer somewhere- and the icing puddled all around the cake, sticking it to the plate.  The finished product was deemed unsuitable for a main birthday cake (even with the decorative scary clown on top) and was put aside.  She did bring it out, and we did get to take it home (Hooray!  He better hide it from me though-).   

After dinner Charles and I went for a walk, out to the bee hives, with the doggs.  We came back and were talking in the living room.... all that exercise had apparently made CoCo hungry.  Karen discovered him up on the dining room table having a go at the clown cake.  As you can see, he gobbled up most of the icing and some of the top layer of the cake- and several stray polka dots.  Now chocolate is not good for dogs, and coco is a little thing.... he will have a belly-ache for sure later on!

Happy Birthday Mr. Manz, your wife loves you!