My mom and dad were here on my mom’s birthday, November 4th. As you probably know, that also happened to be election day this year. When I was little I remember having trouble with the idea that election day wasn’t always on the same date, because one of the first election days I can remember also happened to be on my mom’s birthday. In my young mind election day was always November 4th.

Annalie came in to wake me up that day by announcing, “Mommy, mommy, come and see! It’s raining!” I love rain, and it doesn’t rain much in Southern California. My mom knew I wouldn’t want to sleep through all the rain. As it turned out, it rained pretty much all day. Wasn’t that kind of the weather to send me a present on my mom’s birthday?

Annalie always wants hot chocolate when it rains. I can’t say I blame her. So I made myself some coffee and Annalie some hot chocolate (with special Halloween-shaped marshmallows my Aunt Julie had sent to her) and we sat on the patio under the roof and enjoyed the rain for a little while.

Then we got started on the cake! My mom loves coconut cake. I’d been wanting to try a recipe that had coconut milk in it for ages, and I figured this was the right time. Annalie loves to bake too and she was more than happy to help.

She especially loves using the whisk to mix the dry ingredients together. That has been her special task when we’re baking since she was very small. She gets quite indignant if I try to do that part myself. If I am baking and she is in another part of the house, I will stop and go ask if she wants to stir the flour, because if I offer her banana bread or cake later and she realizes she didn’t get to help make it, her feelings are quite hurt. I can’t say I blame her. A girl likes to know she’s needed. So Annalie is the Official Mixer of Dry Ingredients in this house.

When we had the eggs out for the cake, Annalie asked if she could have a boiled egg. I decided to boil the rest of the dozen since we were leaving town in a few days, and I knew we’d eat up the boiled eggs quickly.

When I boil eggs, I use an egg-poker thingy to poke a hole in the shells, and then I stick the eggs in ice water for ten minutes after they’re cooked. That makes them much easier to peel later. And since we visited Erin & Rocco a couple of months ago and I saw Erin do it, I also splash a little vinegar and a few drops of food coloring into the ice water. It dyes the eggs, which (1) makes them easy to tell apart from any raw eggs in the carton and (2) is fun! Erin has the best ideas.

Right as we were in the midst of boiling eggs and making the coconut cake is when my laptop went into a coma. It froze up and I restarted it, and when it came back on the screen was totally blank. The lights were all on, but the hard drive wasn’t running. It was not fun. But I took a few deep breaths and drew consolation from the fact that we do have an old computer with internet access. Also I was pretty sure Troy would be able to fix it. He’s smart like that with computers. (He did fix it, and it didn’t even take much effort on his part. I am typing this post on my laptop in fact. Though I’m not really expecting it to last much longer. I will probably be jumping on the Mac bandwagon soon.)

After we took my mom out for Mexican food (her favorite kind) for dinner, we came home to frost and assemble the cake. Annalie thought we should dye the frosting pink. My mom is a pretty easy-going sort and said that would be fine.

Of course, what we didn’t think about was that with pink frosting and flaked coconut pressed all over the cake, it would look like a giant Hostess Sno-Ball. We got a good laugh out of that.

I think in the end it looked rather pretty, especially with all the candles lit. And it made a mighty tasty breakfast the next morning, too!