frances cake, take seven: the "it's a girl!" edition

ever since i started a blog, joelle has been one of my most faithful readers. we served on the board at the ywca together and usually only saw each other once a month, but she always knew everything that was going on in my life, which seems like it would be sort of creepy except that it was actually really nice and flattering and exciting to have my very own blog-stalker.

because she was such a loyal fan, we were always trying to think of ways to get joelle on the blog. and we came up with some pretty awesome ideas, but frances cake seemed like the most logical. and the most fun. and the most cake-related, which is never a bad thing. so, joelle came over this week for frances cake! and now her dream of being on my blog has come true. (i am here for you, people. really.)

joelle is going to be a baby mama in november...



... and it's a girl, so we decided to celebrate with a pink cake. did you know that you can turn an ordinary white cake pink by adding a package of red-flavored jell-o? neither did we! but that is what we did, to marvelous effect.







the frosting tripped me up again (i accidentally melted the butter all the way instead of just softening it, which, by the way, makes a mess of your frosting and your microwave) but a lot of extra powdered sugar works sort of like a miracle when it comes to these things, and the final product was delicious indeed. it had the charmingly homemade, whimsical look of a cake prepared by a child, making it a perfect fit for the evening's theme.



in fact, i fully intend to make this very cake again for joelle with the help of her offspring, when the time is right. and, i also fully intend that said offspring will call me "aunt frannie."

another great thing about the evening was that joelle let me touch her cute baby-belly all i wanted. we also talked about how her mom is going crazy with baby clothes, and how labor is sort of freaky, and how being a parent is sort of freaky, and how she has to pee all the time. and lots of other things. but if you guessed that those things were mostly related to babies, then you guessed right. which normally would have made me crazy. but with cake and joelle, i didn't mind at all. in fact, (sssh! don't tell!) i might have even liked it.