birthday cake

When I was about seven or eight, all the girls in my grade were OBSESSED with having a Barbie birthday cake. In case you've never seen one, it's a cake with barbie sticking out the top and her dress was the cake. You made it by baking one regular small cake (or two, depending on how big you wanted her) and then using a pyrex bowl and baking a cake in it so it was rounded at the top - forming the top of her skirt. I know all this because I watch my mom make them for all the girls in my class. Every week it seemed, for a while, she'd get another barbie cake order. We'd go to the store and buy the barbie to stick in the top. (you could also get the cheap barbie that only comes in a swimsuit since you strip her naked to stick her in the cake, anyway.) Well- I wasn't a barbie fan. Really. I thought her feet were stupid and she never just had a tee shirt and jeans back then, so I thought she was some snotty fancy pants that I wouldn't like anyway. She seemed like someone who was pretty, and knew it, and was probably a bitch about it all. Then it was a few days before my birthday and I came home from school only to find a dirty pyrex bowl in the sink. I thought, what the HECK! She knows I hate Barbie! Why would she make me a BARBIE cake?! I moped around for a while... especially when I didn't see her making a barbie cake for anyone else I knew it must be mine. I was really hoping for a E.T. cake or maybe rainbow bright or carebears, so this barbie thing was really getting to me. Then right before my party, I was sulking in the corner when my mom asked me what was wrong. I started crying and said I knew she made me a barbie cake and I hate barbie and everyone was going to make fun of me (DON'T ask me why.. I just felt that this was true) and I thought she knew I hated barbie and I was JUST SO SAD about it all... whew... then she told me she didn't make me a barbie cake. She took me to the cake refridgerator and showed me my PERFECT, wonderful, awesome E.T. in a big pink barbie dress cake. It was the coolesst thing I had ever seen. There was ET standing in the middle of the cake with a big dress on... holding a bouquet of flowers just like was in the movie. It was the coolest cake I'd ever had.