The preparation before Owens birthday party

Food preparations for the birthday part got underway the Wednesday before the party. Everyone had their instructions. Douglas and Brendon (and their happy helper Owen) were in charge of balloon and decoration coordination. Lynese was the cooking mentor and chef-assistant. I was the chef. It was a comedy in the kitchen - on my part. Take one ex-professional accountant minus a good few braincells from producing off-spring. Add cumulative months of interrupted sleep. Mix together and vola = a long evening! Firstly I had no measuring cups, no cake rack, an electric beater with only one whisk (the other one was AWOL) and no clue how difficult it was to make a cake without these utensils. Lynese had imported most of the ingredients and also the cake tin. Prior to the "Olds" arriving I had done the analytical preparation of the cake. I phoned the company in South Africa who made the cake which I saw advertised on the Internet. She gave me, the "prospective client", measurements and how many pieces the cake could be divided into. I then counted how many smarties were used for each line of the cake, all the while presuming South African and EU smarties are in fact the same size. I then drew a template from these measurements and carefully cut it out. I was very pleased with my achievements. Back to the kitchen. It had been planned that there would be a couple of practicing rounds of cake-making until the technique had reached perfection. So after about an hour and a half of preparing and baking the cake came out the oven. First time and it was a success. I must say part of the credit had to go to the recipe. It was idiot proof. The rest of the credit to Lynese for directing the event.

Thursday night was the next planned event. I was starting to feel like "Master Chef" from the BBC. This time I was a lot more prepared. Brendon had sourced stainless steel measuring cups and a cake rack, which let me tell you is like hens teeth in Breda. I still had the handicap of the one-whisk electric beater, but hey it worked first time round. I took this as being my "good luck charm". So again - ingredients measured out, ready, steady, cook. An hour later and the cake came out perfect. By this time I had had enough of chocolate cake mixture and the works so after tasting the chefs & spectators agreed that this would be the final cake. Lynese and I went about the preparation for icing. First we divided all the smarties by colour into different containers. This was a highly technical part of the event. The icing had to be coloured precisely to the chosen hue. After hours of concentration and colour coordinating the smarties the project was complete. The cake was put in a large container and stored away from prying little hands safe for Saturdays consumption!