One of the reasons I was so happy to be fully vaccinated by March was so that I could be here in Mexico for Alejandro's 50th birthday.
We drove to a "pastelería" (pastry shop) that his sister Sandra had recommended. There I bought a type of cake called "mil hojas" (1000 leaves) which is made with a dough similar to what is used in strudel or baklava and which has a creamy filling. It was very good... not too sweet but very rich.
The "cumpleañero" (birthday boy) with his cake
Of course there was the singing of "Las Mañanitas", the traditional Mexican birthday song. However, in this age of COVID, we did not do the "mordida" in which the "cumpleañero" takes a bite from the cake (or in reality has his face pushed into the cake).
Sandra took this video with her cell phone...
As I wrote before my departure, my suitcases were filled with presents for everyone, so we also celebrated all the birthdays that I had missed in the past year... Alejandro's sister, his father and his nephew Ezra. Each one of them had a big gift bag full of presents.
The present which I was most excited to give was a book that I had made for Sandra with all the pictures which I had taken over the years of her son Ezra or which Alejandro had sent me. I think she was holding back the tears as she went through the book.
It was a very, very happy celebration for us all!
I was thinking about the cake smashing, even in Covid free times. I don't know that I'd want to eat a piece of cake that the birthday person had had their nose and mouth in before cutting the cake!
ReplyDeleteWell the portion of the cake that get's smashed is the piece that the birthday person gets. This cake would not have lent itself very well to the "mordida" anyways.
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