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The morning of Quillan’s birthday party had arrived. I woke up in anticipation of cake making at around 7:30 AM, even though I was exhausted. Aunt Sharon and Leila were already up and the cakes were in the oven when I came out of the room for my morning dose of hugs and kisses. Barry and I were “warned” last night about the tradition of the “ugly cakes”* and the frosting making was just underway when I found my camera. Purple, blue and green food coloring dripped slowly into the bowls filled with sweet confectioner’s sugar butter frosting; the colors were really brilliant with a life of their own after Leila mixed them.

For this year’s ugly cake, four round cakes were baked from scratch: two red and two purple. When they had finally cooled, Leila decided that the cake should be a quadruple-decker. And so the creation began. As the creative inspiration is all part of a magical process, and, as Aunt Sharon continued to say, “the cake takes on a life of its own,” I leave the details of the design process to your imaginations and leave you with pictures of the finished product. I will only include that Shannon, Sadie, and Kim helped with the decorating and added the final touches.

Half-way through the design process, people kept coming up with amazing and creative names for the cake. The teacher at heart still within me, I thought to myself, “hmmm, we should have a cake-naming contest”. Leila helped me prepare for it by cutting some of the slips of paper for the name entries and by drawing a rainbow picture as a prize for the winner. People began arriving around 2ish and the party began. Everyone sat about, talked with each other, wrote their names for the cake, and basically shmoozed while Aunt Sharon and Kim were in the kitchen hard at work on another Q’s Birthday Party Tradition: the making of HUGE submarine sandwiches make to order. More too-good-to-be-true yumminess.

After lunch and lounging came the naming of the cake. Quillan read the names that people had entered and asked Leila for assistance in choosing the first and second place winners. Second place went to Aunt Sharon (prize: a kiss from the birthday boy) for her name of “Slip Sliding Away”. The official name of Q’s 32nd birthday Ugly Cake was provided by Sadie (Leila’s younger sister): The Colorful Candy Cake of the Lily of the Year. [I personally think there was some serious bias from the judges, but it was all good fun.] The cutting of the cake was the next adventure of the day. Served with chocolate ice cream, the dessert added to the yumminess and the round-tummyness factors for the day. I made sure that I had my share of the cake, as I was both on the decorating and documenting committees, and enjoyed every melt-in-your-mouth bite.

It was too soon time for people to leave. Phone numbers and email addresses were exchanged, and I look forward to the next time I get to be with such a splendid crowd of family and friends. After everyone departed, including the birthday boy with cake in tow, Aunt Sharon, Uncle Steve, Barry and I repeated last nights events but ended it much earlier than before. Eventually, we crawled into bed to dream of huge sugar-coated cakes and fabulous parties.

• Apparently, if I remember the history correctly (and please feel free to correct me), someone in the family created the first and original Ugly Cake years ago, but it officially took off as a tradition when Quillan was little and wanted to start decorate his own birthday cakes. Year after year as the process continued, each cake somehow managed to produce a cake that was uglier than the year before it.