summary: Cake Day; annual vinarterta making; disaster averted (again?!) (click on image to see larger views and more photos taken on previous Cake Days)

Yesterday, my sister and niece came over to make Vínarterta. Yes, I know. It is a little bit late…

But last Friday, when we planned to have Cake Day – even then on the late side – our oven had suddenly stopped working the night before. (Don’t ask. It’s a long and sordid tale. But after two electrician visits, at least we didn’t have to buy a new stove and oven!)

It was only the second time that our niece has made the cake so she elected to making the prune filling. We all pitched in to cut the prunes in quarters before cooking them. We didn’t want to be repeating any errors from past years…. (read more about that here)

And yet, as the vanilla was being stirred into the filling, a whole prune pit was discovered by our eagle eyed niece! Before relegating the pit to the compost we examined it carefully to see if we could tell which one of us had neglected to notice it still lurking in the “pitted” prunes. But lacking the proper DNA testing equipment, we had to give up establishing blame. (But I couldn’t help feeling sideways looks all around and three peoples’ unspoken whispers of “It couldn’t have been me! Could it?? No. It must have been her….”)

However, Cake Day is definitely not the day for accusations and unpleasantness. We simply applauded our niece for good spotting and while waiting for the layers and filling to cool, retired to the living room for the annual Scrabble Fest. Playing Scrabble with three people goes much faster (Ha!! I won!!! I won!!! Because the others were left with many tiles, including the J and K when I put down the last of my tiles). Which meant we had time for pick-up sticks.

You think that pick-up sticks is a child’s game, don’t you? It’s not. Try it. It’s really a very good game for all ages. In fact, I think it’s a better game for adults than it is for children.

And all too quickly, it was time to put away the game boxes, stick the layers together, wrap the cakes and put them in their tins. And another Cake Day drew to a close. An especially great Cake Day it was too.

In spite of the fact that we were late making the cake this year, I’m thinking that this year’s cake is going to be the best ever.

And it’s still November!! Not even Advent yet. Quick, race to the store to get some prunes. You still have time for your Cake Day.

• Ví­narterta recipe
• Christmases Past “Disaster Averted”
• earlier posts about ví­narterta:
  * Better late than never (December 2006)
  * Mmmm… ví­narterta (January 2007)
  * pre-pitted prunes, eh? (December 2007)