All that is mine is my mother and father's line

[sovay]

Photo-post. For my mother's birthday, we took her to Singin' in the Rain (1952) at the Somerville Theatre and then dinner at Za in Arlington, where my brother and his wife met us with their three-month-old. We went back to Lexington afterward for cake. I took pictures.



My mother's favorite color is orange. She loves autumn and nasturtiums and tiger lilies and birds of paradise. This year she asked for an orange cake, so my father made her one. Two layers of orange sponge with orange curd for filling and a buttercream frosting flavored with orange zest and oil, decorated on top with slices of Valencia orange and mint leaves for variety. It was served with plain whipped cream on the side.



derspatchel helped light it.



My mother really liked it.



So did everyone else.

I am off to read Ben Aaronovitch's Broken Homes (2013) and sleep.

Comments

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

That is a stunningly beautiful cake, and your mother's face in that penultimate photo just warms my heart. To see a woman contemplating how immensely loved she is -- just so lovely. Thank you for sharing these photos.

(My mother always made a fluffy orange cake for our birthdays, growing up, but it was never so intensely orange-y as this! Do you think you will repeat or post a recipe?)

[sovay]

To see a woman contemplating how immensely loved she is -- just so lovely. Thank you for sharing these photos.

You're welcome.

*hugs*

(My mother always made a fluffy orange cake for our birthdays, growing up, but it was never so intensely orange-y as this! Do you think you will repeat or post a recipe?)

My father invented it, so I'll ask him! Fair warning: there may not be a recipe. Both of my parents are intuitive cooks, and while my mother learned to care about measurements early on (her grandmother saying things like "a knuckle of butter" drove her up the wall) and writes down especially successful improvisations, my father not infrequently describes something he's just made in terms of it being exactly like something else, only different. I got this explanation about the orange curd, for example—it was just like lemon curd, only not lemon.