myjoys: Hawaii-Day 11

11 days. It just keeps flying. I try to stop at least once a day and just look around. It is SO surreal that I am here!

Well today was Mrs. B's birthday! I was asked to make a surprise cake for Mrs. B while she was at her appointment this morning. It was quite crazy, but oh so fun. I love baking. So much. Now of course, weirdo me refuses to make cake out of a box mix, so I had to do the whole thing from scratch. in two hours. including going to the grocery store to pick up groceries for it. But little Owen was quite the trooper, and even helped a lot!

I made a white cake with strawberry filling (just strawberry jam) and chocolate frosting. I layered cake, jam, cake, frosting, cake, jam, cake. When I tasted it tonight, I thought it was quite good (if I do say so myself.) but had too much chocolate frosting.

Now this afternoon Miss Ava helped me to decorate the cake. She did a fantastic job, and not only came up with ideas by herself, but also did a lot of the decorating. Now I will say, this decorating job is defiantly not the best I have ever done, but do let me add that when I am at home I have a whole decorating set, including bags and tips. And here all I had was plastic sandwich bags and a 5 year old :)

We went out to dinner at a wonderful restaurant called Buca di beppo (Which I think I went to when I was 7, living in Ohio.) The food was amazing, but the best part for me was that we got to sit in the special table IN the kitchen! We watched all of the chefs cook to meals and the servers would bring the plates over before they took them out and explain what it was. Now for someone who loves cooking, and especially loves Italian food, this was a DREAM.