4TH OF JULY THE AUSSIE WAY

Yesterday was 4^th of July, and because I am a devoted, loving wife, aware of the sacrifice my immigrant husband has made for me, I made him a flag cake.

It was not without incident.

‘The thing I like about you Nome,’ says my oldest friend, ‘is that lack of ability or equipment never holds you back.’

For some reason I decided to use a bowl the size of a UFO to mix the ingredients in, turned on the hand held blender and watched the batter go catapulting around the room, covering everything – including Miss Q – in a fine coating of egg, flour and baking powder, and making it very necessary for me to borrow my neighbour’s vacuum cleaner.

I ignored the mess and carried on.

I didn’t have a cake tin, so I used a tray reserved for baked dinners that I’d found at the local $2 store, oddly enough, not for $2.

The batter fit.

Things seemed to be looking up…until I pulled the cake out of the oven and tried to extract it from the tray.

‘Did you flour the tin?’ asks my chef husband, which I don’t think is fair because he is a trained professional.

‘I greased it. I thought that’s all you had to do.’

Evidently not.

Eventually we got the cake out in two pieces.

No matter. I have a lot of cream to whip, I’ll just cover up the crack. No one will ever know.

‘You might want to use a smaller vessel this time,’ Gregory calls carefully from the safety of the bathroom where he is ridding Miss Q of egghead.

‘All over it,’ I tell him and switch on the blender…forgetting to hold onto the container, causing the cream to fly over the top and add a layer of thick cream to the cake batter already smeared all over the house.

‘Everything ok?’ calls Gregory as the sound of the blender abruptly stops.

‘Yep. Why wouldn’t it be?’

Onto the decorations.

Last year I used strawberries and blueberries. 

Last year's Flag cake

This year our local grocer isn’t even stocking blueberries because they’re so expensive they decided no one would ever buy them (this tight arse sure wouldn’t) so I had to resort to jaffas and blue M and M’s.

Except I didn’t realise they were selling a State of Origin pack of blue ones only, so I bought the regular pack and was forced to eat every other colour.

That was the easiest part of the whole process.

The end result was that Gregory got his Fourth of July cake.

And that, after all was the goal.

This year's Flag cake. I think my skills have really improved.

Happy Fourth of July Americans, sorry I’m a day late.