The United States of Friendship Part - 4 - April

Picture taken from the Pinterest Mardi Gras Party Board

King Cake 

Take…

3 (14 ounce) cans refrigerated sweet roll dough

2 (12 fluid ounce) cans creamy vanilla ready-to-spread frosting

2 drops green food coloring

2 drops yellow food coloring

2 drops red food coloring

2 drops blue food coloring

1/2 cup multi-colored sprinkles

1 plastic baby

Follow These Steps…

(Step 5 is the most important of all.  If you forget to insert the plastic baby, you have to start all over again – King Cake is King Cake only because of the plastic baby)

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a baking sheet.

Step 2 -Open the cans of sweet roll dough and unroll the dough from each can into 3 strands. Working on a clean surface, place 3 dough strands side by side and gather them together to make one large strand. Fold this in half, and roll slightly to make a fat log. Repeat steps with the remaining dough. Place each log on the prepared baking sheet and shape to make a ring, overlapping the ends and pinching them together to make a complete circle. Pat the dough into shape as necessary to make the ring even in size all the way around. Cover loosely with foil.

Step 3 - Bake in preheated oven until firm to the touch and golden brown, 50 to 60 minutes. Check often for doneness so the ring doesn't overbake. Place on a wire rack and cool completely.

Step 4 - Place the cake ring on a serving plate.

Step 5 – Cut a slit along the inside of the ring and insert the small plastic baby, pushing it far enough into the cake to be hidden from view.

Step 6 - Divide the frosting evenly between 4 bowls. Stir 1 tablespoon of milk into each bowl to thin the frosting. Use the frosting in one bowl to drizzle over the cooled cake. To the remaining three bowls of frosting, stir yellow food coloring into one and green into another. Stir the red and blue food colorings together with the frosting in a third bowl to make purple frosting. Drizzle the cake with yellow, green, and purple frostings in any desired pattern. Dust the cake with multi-colored sprinkles and decorate with beads, additional plastic babies, curly ribbon, and other festive trinkets.

Step 7 – Send cake to San Jose for Tanita and her friends to tear to shreds to find the plastic baby. 

The United States of Friendship Part 4 – April

Everyone who has read this blog knows the story of Tanita’s birthday and the King Cake.

My friend April gifted us this cake.

She ordered it from a New Orleans Bakery and had it shipped for Tanita’s 8^th birthday.

King Cake is a very special cake and it is made and eaten only during Mardi Gras week.

It is part of a wonderful Louisiana tradition you can read about here.

Thanks to April, we were able to have a mini Mardi Gras at one of Tanita’s birthday parties.

I met April when I was working in Palm.

She and I shared adjacent cubes.

In our version of water cooler chat, I would lean over her cube wall and we would gab about everything under the sun.

She was fascinating to talk to and I hung on to her every word.

April was only in her early 20’s at the time I met her.

But even being so young, she had led an interesting life, done interesting things and had interesting things to talk about.

Whether it was Jeff Foxworthy and redneck jokes….

Or April’s plans to purchase a star, name it after her husband, and give it him as a gift for his birthday.

Or her belly-dancing hobby…..

April’s conversation was never dull.

April believed in living life large.

Already at her age….

she had done things like sky jumped out of a plane….

..and had tried out many different styles and colors on her hair.

She struck me as a free blithe spirit.

Open to life and its unlimited palette of colors.

I admired her for being fearlessly able to be herself, orange hair, bejeweled tongue and all.

She and her husband Damon lived and worked in the Bay Area for only a year.

But they made a lasting impression on me.

Because they were just the coolest, most funnest couple to be around.

2 souls who knew the secret of living life well was not just saying yes to life, but also bringing joy to other people’s lives.

There was the King Cake.

There were the creative birthday gifts to Tanita.

These faithfully arrived in the mail every year, year after year, until Tanita was 10.

And how can I ever forget the ball game treat to Tanita?

A day at AT&T Park in San Francisco.

With all the bells and whistles.

A bat and cap for Tanita.

Hot dogs and sodas.

Dancing and cheering.

Tanita even getting a privileged view of the game from atop Damon’s shoulders.

A week later, we would discover the treat also included a scrapbook of pictures to immortalize the event.

Everyone should have a friend like April and Damon.

Even if only for a short time.

Do you remember the post where I asked you to guess what Lakshmi Mittal and I have in common?

How about the post where you had to guess what Bill Clinton & George H W Bush have in common? Or what my sis Rosie and Obama have in common - revealed in the second post in the same series?

Here’s a new one for you to guess …

What does my friend April have in common with Rudy of the Cosby Show, Cindy of the Brady Bunch, Nigel and Kyle of Cheaper by the Dozen, or Lydia Bennet of Pride and Prejudice?

The answer….

All of them are the youngest of many in their families.

Could the youngest children of a large family be the most free spirited?

By the time they come round, typically their parents are more relaxed, less rule-bound, less paranoid, more easy going, and in some cases, might even have metamorphosed into hippie moms or dads.

I say it’s the perfect storm to nurture free spirits.

So to end this post, I am going to say thank you to two sets of people.

The first is to April herself.

Thank you April for being the loving big-hearted person you are.

And the free spirit you are.

The second thank you is to all those people who nurtured and encouraged that spirit when it was young.

Thanks to them (or to the guardian angel of blithe free spirits), April is a blessing to everyone whose lives she touches.

Yes, so thanks all around. To you and you and you.
 

And finally dear reader, thank you for coming along on this journey of the memoirs of my friendships. Speaking of memoirs, what are you doing about yours?  I know very little about my grandparents or the young life of my parents.  Don't you want your heirs to know about you?  If you need inspiration and guidance, William Zinsser has an article in the American Scholar just for you. P.S. Don't forget to come back next week for the next installment of the United States of Friendship…..M…..a Pearl Seeker like you.