One of our family traditions is to have cookie cake birthday cakes. Growing up, we would always order from Great American Cookie. They are so good! I make my own now, but that's just because
- The closest Great American Cookie when we lived in Duncan was all the way in Lawton, and I didn't always have time to make that drive.
- The cookie cakes from Walmart weren't great because they were way too sweet.
- There are certainly no GAC stores here in Oman.
- I do make at least my own birthday cake healthier.
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| My most recent birthday cake. I could use some decorating tips from GAC. |
I suppose the cookie cake thing isn't so much a tradition in my family now. J likes to make different choices each year for his birthday. He is currently requesting an Oreo cheesecake. And Stephen isn't a big sweets eater, so he may just want ice cream. But I still choose cookie cake and so does E. Side note: my sister chose cookie cakes as her wedding cake. My mom ordered 6 (the bride and groom cakes were all cookie cakes) and received a 7th free. We had no idea the "buy 6 get 1 free" applied to whole cookie cakes. It was so good that I still regret the (more expensive) wedding cake I had. Why didn't I think to have cookie cake??? Well played, Amy, well played.
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| Ben's groom's cake |
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| Amy's wedding cakes that we would replace with more cakes as they were eaten. |
Anyways, many years ago, I ordered the birthday cake for my mom's birthday so that she wouldn't have to order her own. I called, picked out a design, spelled her name, and placed the order. This must have been before I could drive (I think I was 15) because I remember that my dad went with me to pick up the cake. The showed us the cake to make sure it was correct. We looked at it, apparently both thought something was off, didn't confer, and (mistakenly) approved the cake.
Back home, we put the cake in the oven for safe keeping and went about the night. We went to dinner somewhere my mom chose (another favorite family tradition) then came home for cake and presents. When we pulled out the cake to add candles was when we noticed what was not right about the cake. The cake did NOT say, "Happy birthday Sheryl!" as I had requested. They had inverted the "y" and "l" for one thing, and the "h" in "Sheryl" had a rather short leading line. So instead, the cake read, "Happy birthday Snerly!" My mom, the English major, noticed the error right away. We all had a good laugh. She blew out the candles, and devoured the always delicious cake.
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| My '73 Super Beetle |
Fast forward a year to my mom's next birthday. I again ordered a cookie cake and went to pick it up. I must have been 16 because I went alone. Pretty sure my mom's cake was riding in the back of my cute little lime green beetle. As I'm driving home, I realized that they didn't open the cake box for me to verify that the cake was correct. I just took it blindly on faith just a year after they screwed it up. I started having horrible concerns that I would get home to a cake with a picture of a big rig that said something like, "Keep on truckin'!" Luckily, the cake was correct as ordered.
To continue the joke, my mom one year ordered her own cake to say, "Keep on truckin' Snerly!" We obviously still joke about the Snerly cake. We still jokingly refer to her as Snerly on occasion. She is in fact listed as "Snerly" in an account I have online just for the whimsy of it.
Love you, Mom! Enjoy another trip around the sun. And keep on truckin'!