Cake #75 Warm White Chocolate Macadamia Ring

Only four and a half weeks left to go until I get to be a mommy all over again and the acid reflux and indigestion that is plaguing my system is an ever present reminder of my approaching due date. I do not understand how my father deals with indigestion and acid reflux on a daily basis – it certainly isn’t cute Prostrate cancer isn’t cute either, but it is another ailment that my father has to deal with. His surgery is this Wednesday and where words do not suffice, cake always does.  So this week’s cake was in honor of my daddy: the father, the pop, and the nut.

Every daughter looks up to her father as her “hero”; I was no different.  My father is a looming man of well over six feet with large muscles and calloused hands. So growing up, it wasn’t hard to imagine that my daddy could defeat any bad guy, fix anything that was broken, or ease any hurt. When I was a child, he would stomp into my room bellowing “Fee Fi Foe Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!” I would scream and pretend that if I was still enough, he wouldn’t find me hiding under the covers of my bed; he would pretend that he couldn’t find me. I have a lot of memories that I associate with my daddy, the hero.  I remember seeing him take down many adversaries in nail-biting arm-wrestling contests. I remember him winning a strength contest for his grip at a carnival game. I remember when I broke my front tooth; he was able to work his magic to get me in the dentist’s chair the very next morning to fix it.  I remember him scooping me up in his arms, like I was air, when I was thirteen and I was bitten pretty severely by a dog. I remember every Valentine’s Day he would wake me up in the morning with a box of chocolates just from him. I remember the first boy who broke my heart and the card my father left on my dresser that slowly began to mend the pieces back together.

My daddy walking me down the aisle. 

Now that I have a daughter and soon to be a son of my own, my daddy, who is still my hero, has become a superhero in his own right as “pop”. He was the first person to feed my daughter solid food, a banana, which to this day is still her favorite thing to eat. Whenever we visit pop’s house, Evalyn has a routine with pop of sitting on his lap and looking at a book of birds and then wearing straw hats and leis. My daughter can expect a wet belly full of raspberries if she ends up in her pop’s arms. Pop even took her on her first carousel ride in Florida. I know that he will be the same goofy, fun-loving pop when Liam is born.

Evalyn and Pop on her first Halloween.              

     

 Evalyn and Pop on her first trip to Florida.

Even more than being a grandfather, I truly relate to my father because of his . . . nutty side. Besides, the fact that we both love to snack on all types of nuts, we both have a lot of similar nutty traits. For example, we both are extremely hard-working to the point of an addiction. We take our work home with us, we can’t stop talking about it, we basically drive people insane with how much we stress over work. We both can get a bit . . . snarky when it comes to other people ruining our stuff. I am recalling the time my dad threw out a boy from my house, and told him to never come back, because he was playing rough with my dad’s pool table. Just yesterday I freaked out a Ted for a whole half hour because he ruined one of my shirts in the wash – at least I get to blame it on pregnancy hormones. 

So, I chose this cake, the Warm White Chocolate Macadamia Ring, because it is sweet and warm like my father, but also is nutty, like him too. Besides white chocolate and macadamia nuts, it was made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla, baking powder, milk, and light cream – and I guess to be truly corny- a lot of love, memories, and wishes for a successful surgery.

My cake:

The book's cake:

Love you Daddy- now go and eat some cake!