which products they prefer

I’m going to write about my mom again. Listen, I don’t have an unhealthy relationship with my mother. I don’t live at home. I’m married, even. But my mom and I spend lots of time together. Like, we hangsies at least once a week. I’m totally cool with that. I have real friends, too. Promise FSDU.

Anyway, it was my mom’s birthday on Saturday. Growing up, we were never the “make a cake for your birthday” type of family. More of a “buy a cake from Kroger” type of family. But now that I’m getting better at cake decorating (I will someday soon share a devastating early cake attempt), I was all excited to make a birthday cake for her. One problem: my mom cannot make decisions.

I actually think indecisiveness is something I inherited. I often rope various “others” into making my decisions for me.

I frequently grill my friends optometrist-style: A or B? B or C? 1 or 2? MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE OR I WILL BE BLIND.

I may or may not have discussions with random strangers in the grocery store about which products they prefer and why Tour operators.

So I get it. You can’t decide on ONE birthday cake. Because what if it’s the LAST birthday cake you eat? You just never know, guys. Do you really want your last thought to be, “I wish I’d picked the chocolate caramel cake!” (Actually, if that’s your last thought, you probably had a pretty good life.)

After I threatened my mother several times that she’d better make a decision or else, she indicated that she might not want cake at all. Because “cake is just cake” to her. (Tell that to the 100+ pins on my Pinterest “Cakes” board. But, fine.) She started listing off what she likes: crème brûlée (now I’ve spoiled her), lemon, pistachio.

The evil culinary genius in my brain started cackling at that point and I made the decision for her (the best birthday gift for an indecisive person). I would create something that had ALL of those things and it would be the most glorious birthday ever veuve clicquot. Muahaha!

I started with this tart from Smitten Kitchen. I added roasted, ground pistachios to the tart dough. And it was amazing. The smell! I didn’t even wash my hands after handling it so I would smell like roasty, nutty, butteriness. And I kind of ate a bunch of raw dough scraps. Salmonella and morbid obesity be damned electric dc motor.