Family Day - 2016

I haven't written one of these for a while.  There's a reason for that but nothing I'm going to write down.  Either I (or whomever reads this after me) will remember when revisiting it, or I won't and it doesn't matter either way.

So today is Family Day in Ontario (and something like 2/3 of Canada, I guess?  B.C. seems to have had theirs last week, for example, I don't think QC has one at all ... I don't pretend to have any idea how different provinces deal with such things) and I've been planning for this one for a while now.

It was a little touch and go because James had the flu this weekend, he was in very rough shape on Friday night and most of Saturday, but Daniel and I mostly kept to ourselves and today all seemed quite well.  Actually, today was a really good day for it, too, because it was not nearly as wickedly cold as it has been (-33°C yesterday when Daniel and I were heading out of the house) but it's the warmest now it's been all day, as far as I can tell, and the temperature probe says -11°C, so it's still not exactly "playing out in the snow all day" weather.

So what did I have planned for today?  A follow-up to the insanity that was James' birthday cake.  The Spider Cake, home-brew edition.

My original plan was something like this:

Because the effect looks good and it doesn't look terribly difficult to do.  Then I found something even better when I started looking around on Amazon for hemisphere and spherical cake-pans.  But I won't ruin it, let's back up.

James and Daniel both helped make the cake and they were both really into it.  When we started talking about it after breakfast this morning the first thing James said was "Daddy, we will make a white cake.  That way Daniel will have some, too."

I was impressed that James remembered that Daniel doesn't really care for chocolate that much (sometimes I seem to forget that, but I guess I'm kind of getting slow my my elder years ...) but even more impressed that James decided we should make a white cake even though his favourite is by far chocolate, but this way his little brother would enjoy it too.  In the last three or four months he's gotten REALLY good at thinking about his little brother.

Anyway, then he started assigning roles, which I was mostly okay with — Daddy, you will put in the flour and I will put in the milk — but more than a little concerned for some areas of responsibility — and Daniel will put in the eggs. — but as anyone who knows me knows, I'm always inclined to go with their suggestions.

So, the recipe which called for three eggs ended up consuming five from our fridge, but at least the three of us got to also talk about how eggs are delicate and even when you're cracking them it is possible to be too violent with them, and we got to say "Bye eggs!" as they washed down the drain with a mixture of shell.

James also helped me colour the frosting (black, of course) and decided that we should make a female black widow (though we took some liberties, as you'll see from the photos).  Christine did the actual hairy part of the spider based on what I said I'd thought I would try and I think the effect is pretty outstanding.  Then James helped me do the remainder of the decoration.  Like so:

The legs are Dare Fiddlestix, the points of articulation are coloured fondant, as is the hourglass on the spider's back.

Unrelated:  I didn't make the connection until right this moment that James was helping me make a giant spider cake while wearing his spider-man pajamas.  As I said, getting slow. 

By the time we were doing this part of the decorating it was late enough in the day that Daniel had largely departed from the town of Reasonable but I didn't even try to get him to go for a nap, there was no way we were going to complete the mission before supper if I took a break to get him settled, so we just let him watch a movie downstairs while James and I finished decorating our black widow.

The final effect was pretty good.  We gave it fangs using the same pinkish-orange fondant we had already coloured, but then James said he also needed a big, smiling mouth, so there we are.  He very firmly informed me that spiders are always happy.  He also informed me that he would be eating the cephalothroax (look at me, looking up big words) and Daniel would eat the abdomen.  This was mainly because he was extremely interested in eating the legs, I think.

So what was the verdict?

Iiiiinteresting ...

verrrrry iiiinteresting ...

Look at thaaaaaat!

It's full of spider eggs!

Yeah, we went there.  Turns out James can't decide which is tastier, spider eggs or spider legs.  What I know is that I'm fulfilling my duty as a dad when I get my boys talking about which parts of the spider are yummiest and when James is telling me that all of the eggs will hatch into giant spiders like this one.

Mission accomplished.