Forgive the posting lapse, please…

I’m smack in the middle of birthday season here at stately Pastry manor. All the ladies here have birthdays in the same roughly 3-week span. It’s a lot of baking, shopping and decorating…the time of year when my masculinity goes out the window and I’m forced to channel my inner Martha. Thank you for you patience.

24 thoughts on “Forgive the posting lapse, please…”

  1. No apology was necessary. Take your time and celebrate your family. We’ll still be here when you return. Warm happy birthday wishes to the Pastry Birthday Girls from me!

  2. Do the ladies of the House of Pastry have standard birthday cake requests, or is every year different? I remember the thrill of choosing a different type of cake year to year, where my dad always wanted the same yellow cake filled with apricot preserves and covered with chocolate ganache. Man that was a good cake!

    1. Hey Elizabeth!

      They have different requests every year, and they can be extremely challenging. In past years I’ve really had to think. “I want a cake that looks like a hat!” or “make me a cake like a bird’s nest!”. This year the first two birthday cake wishes were surprisingly specific: a bee sting cake and a pecan pie. A chocolate fondue was also provided for my younger daughter (both daughters get two requests: one for the family party which is just us four, another for a tea party they get on a weekend afternoon for up to three friends).

      The next one is my older daughter who’s turning 11. She usually has pretty fanciful ideas, being the dreamy artist of the family. I always hold my breath a little before she speaks her wish. She’s musing now…and I fear what she’ll come up with!

      – Joe

  3. Glad you have your priorities straight, Joe. We females need to be celebrated on our birthdays. Be sure to tell them all how young and beautiful they are!

    Nancy

    1. They’re high maintenance if that’s what you mean, Nancy! 😉

      And don’t worry..daddy/hubby never forgets to praise amply. I’m too well trained!

      – Joe

  4. Most definitely forgiven! Please wish all the Pastry ladies wonderful joyous birthdays! And pass along a big Thank You from me for sharing Mr. Pastry with the web crowd the rest of the year. 😀 Have fun!

    Eva

  5. uh Joe, Sweetie, please…. believe you me, this is the time your masculinity goes UP… don’t let testosterone deceive you… just saying…

    1. I’m not that confident, Karen, but I appreciate the sentiment. If I don’t balance all the frill-hanging with some loud Metallica I risk a full-blown gender crisis. But I’ll try to remember what you said!

      – Joe

    2. No no, Karen has it right! Men who step out of their comfort zones to hang streamers and make beautiful sweets to expand the comfort zones of the women and girls they love? You’re a keeper, sir, and don’t you forget it. They won’t.

      1. Let’s hope so, Jeannine. If I somehow got myself booted out of the house I wouldn’t be able to take the brick oven with me, and then where would I be? Then again I suppose I could live in it…

        Huh. Better stop here before I give Mrs. Pastry any ideas.

        – Joe

        1. Oops, “Exactly!” was meant as a response to Jeannine.

          Joe, never fear my generous pastry genius friend, if the worst should happen and you are separated from your brick oven, you could come to the left coast and home sit at my house while I go to the Midwest to do the hard work of making sure your oven is well-utilized, maintained, and adored. And — wait! It gets even better! — since I’m sure you would be even more frustrated than I at having only a glorified Easy Bake oven to bake with now that the elderly Jenny the Jenn-Air is on permanent hiatus, you would have the option of recreating your brick oven on the slab out back with all your new-found free time and my multiple piles-o-rocks (slate, quartz, etc that I collected from the mountains to use for landscaping) that are sitting around out there. It’s win-win I tell ya!

          1. Remind me not to give you Mrs. Pastry’s number. That’s too good a plan.

            – J

  6. Lucky Pastry Ladies! (I’m the baker in my circle, so having someone else make cake for me is a great treat.)
    However, are you suggesting you are not the Master of Puppets?
    Nothing Else Matters. Sad But True, Wherever I May Roam.
    You will not be Unforgiven.
    And at the end of the day, Enter Sandman.

    1. Just call me harvester of sorrow, Charm, the leper messiah. You know, someone should write some upbeat hardcore one of these days. The metal guys need a sense of humor!

      – Joe

      1. Metal. Upbeat. Humor.
        A metal version of You Light Up My Life? Why bother with metal if your life is all light and joy? (I only keep it on hand so I can swear and shout through my hour on the elliptical. Really.)

        1. It might just work, Charm, but only the other hand might come off as insufferably ironic. The Ramones managed to be hard and funny at the same time, probably why I love them so much.

          Nice idea though!

          – Joe

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