File this cake under: ZOMG

Okay, so in chatting with a friend, I learned that she makes cakes as a little side business. Oh! Make Nate's cake, I exclaimed. Okay! she agreed. A flurry of back and forth email and face to face conversation left her with the instructions: Rocket ship, green. Oh, vanilla.

And then I sit back and wait, which I excel at, and which is why I outsource most things. (I would make an excellent supervisor.)


Then, it's birthday dinner time, and she slowly drives up, glacially gets out of her car (all to avoid cake damage), and delivers THIS CAKE:

Nate's eyes got about as big as the platter and he just stood, staring up at the counter. Can I touch it? Please can I touch it? SURE, I decide, having apparently zero respect for the amount of work that went into making this. One finger only, I add, slapping on a garnish of caution at the last minute, which probably kept him from completely destroying it. And so he added a healthy divot to the frosting, which was then artfully (and graciously) blotted out by Tha Cakemaker.

But really, the cake was mindblowing. Nate had the best birthday in all the land, aw. Thanks, Cake Lady!