Cake

Everyone loves cake! Right?

Wrong!

Most children hate cake but will not admit it. They all smack their lips and make yummy noises clapping their little hands when the birthday cake comes out. Their eyes go wide as it is carefully set in front of the birthday girl or boy. Their voices ring out and the decibels climb to a glass-shattering level. The candles are blown out with a wish and a Hurray! while someone runs to fetch the tools to serve out the bounty. Not before too long their little faces and fingers are covered in icing and their tongues are waging from one corner of their mouths to the other. The children bounce in their chairs like popcorn popping. I am sure they burn off any calories that happen to make it into their tummies.

At the end of it all; while cleaning up the dishes, one cannot wonder if the cake had just exploded on the plates rather than being eaten. I am certain that if I gathered all the bits from the table cloth, the chairs, under the table, and what could be salvaged from their clothes, that I could recover all of the actual cake.

There would be very little icing, however.

So what were they doing? It was after hosting my third birthday party at the tearoom and having painstakingly baked from scratch exactly what Mom insisted was their child's favourite, that I decided to ask the kids why they didn't eat the cake. I was told for the most part that they didn't really like cake and that they just liked the icing. Another child said that she only liked the pudding part in the middle. She said that cake had too many crumbs. A boy happily told me that he tried to eat cake but it wouldn't stay on his fork, but that the icing part did. The real clincher was seeing a child proceed to lick all of the icing off his cake and then carefully put the rest down on his plate. Not a single tooth mark had touched the surface.

I must be different. I loved cake as a child. I liked every part of it - the icing, the crumbs, the jam and cream centres. I especially liked my Aunt Millie's cakes because she would hide coins in them. I do remember going to birthday parties as a child and that most of my friends didn't really like cake. Nor did two out of three of my own children. I decided to do birthday tea parties instead with lots of dressing up, trying on hats, gloves, and fancy clothes. We made child size scones with cream and jam and everyone could eat whatever they liked however they liked it. This way the clean-up would be much easier and there would be less waste. We had some fun with teaching tea time etiquette (and basic restaurant manners) and then presents would be opened and everyone would go home happy.

Oddly adults love cake, but are not huge fans of the icing.