Throwback Thursday

It's birthday week here, so throwback birthday pictures seemed appropriate.  

When I was growing up, my parents were very close friends with our next door neighbors, Bob and Virginia.  They were a nice couple about the same age as my parents with a son about my age (who was insufferable!)  Virginia made the best desserts in the world and she officially assigned herself to make all of my birthday cakes from the day she met me.

She was a brash, vulgar, loud woman from New York, but she adored my family and we had a special bond.  She spoke for me, and plowed over people who got in my way, and defended me at the bus stop.  I loved her.  

All of her cakes were pretty extravagant.  And she was usually very good at picking my favorite colors and decorating with little things that were representative of my personality.  Once she made the top of the cake look like stables with horses everywhere and I got to keep the horses after we ate the cake.  And then another one looked like a record player (record player = what we used in the 70s to listen to music, before cassette tapes, before CDs and waaay before iTunes)...only it was covered in purple frosting, which was my favorite color, and which my mother hated.  But Virginia snuck and made me a purple cake anyway.  I loved that woman. 

I'm not sure whose personality this cake represented because I've never liked chocolate, I had never seen snow at this point in my life, and I had certainly never expressed an interest in skiing.  But, it was still a pretty amazing cake and extremely thoughtful of her to go to so much effort.  I totally remember those little candy rocks on the top.  So yummy.

Today, my birthday tastes are a little more sophisticated...vanilla bean cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory and not a single plastic horse on the top.  But I love remembering those amazing childhood birthday cakes and how lucky I was to have had such a sweet, generous neighbor who was super talented with frosting.