a birthday dream come true
I feel certain that once upon a time I squeezed my eyes tight, licked my lips and let out a gusty exhale over a vanilla buttercream-topped chocolate cake, wishing with all my might that one day I would have all the birthday cake I can eat. I must have blown out every one of the candles that birthday because this year, my ultimate cake dream came true.
My company, Life of Reiley, released its second cookbook title Kiss My Bundt on the weekend of my birthday. For the book’s release, we hosted a an open house with baker Chrysta Wilson at the Kiss My Bundt bakery. This was how it came to pass that I spent my birthday enveloped in the scent of some of the best cake I’ve ever tasted. In addition to being in charge of pouring the Perrier Jouet Champagne to a steady stream of guests, I appointed myself unofficial cake tester, double checking every tray of samples that found itself in my path. There was chocolate, lime basil, chocolate-bacon, rum pound cake and vegan chocolate cake as well as all the bakery’s daily flavors.
The event, seen at least through my Champagne-veiled eyes, was a most seductive success, filled not only with the food of my childhood dreams but with exotic, aphrodisiac ingredients and a very adult drink to wash them down. (The book, which is an outstanding baking cookbook if I do say so myself, was exceptionally well received and I began to think Chrysta might develop arthritic fingers from signing so many copies of her masterpiece). If you have to work on your birthday, let it be eating cake!
me, Chrysta and cake, glorious cake