Continuing on through the morning,
I found Megan at one point
in her room
on the phone.
(Typical teenager. Look at her, telling me to “Talk to the hand!”)
Just kidding!!!
My kids
never do that to me!
She was waving while talking to her grandma!
I spent a fair portion of the morning working on a very special cake.
We are just becoming more acquainted with the Feast Days that are celebrated in
the Catholic Church,
and I discovered that
July 16th is celebrated as the Feast Day of
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel,
which, according to Wikipedia,
“is the title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary, in her role as patroness of the Carmelite Order. The first Carmelites were Christian hermits living on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land during the late 12th and early to mid 13th centuries. They built a chapel in the midst of their hermitages which they dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, whom they conceived of in chivalric terms as the ‘Lady of the place.’”
Learning this new and interesting fact about Megan’s birth date,
I resolved to find a way to celebrate both
in some way.
Obviously, “caramel” would have to feature prominently.
I decided to try something I’ve known about for years but have never done before.
This is the method of boiling sweetened condensed milk for 4 hours
n the can to create caramel.
I didn’t quite boil the cans for that long, as I didn’t really have the time,
but the result was still a very lovely caramel sauce
to use as a filling.
The ingredients for our
Mt. Carmel Cake:
This is the before shot — It needed to chill a bit before the final touches were added.
During the afternoon I worked on supper -
a big batch of home-made macaroni and cheese
using a custard-cheese-sauce,
and two alternatives – one with sausage/ground beef,
the other vegetarian with bell peppers, onions, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower.
Here’s the crew, getting ready to eat dinner.
And finally,
the Pièce de résistance:
Mt. Carmel!
This. Cake. Was. AMAZING!
Next year it will be even better because I will have the right size pans for the tiers, and I will make it in advance so the layers will have a chance to freeze first, and wont slip and slide off to the side.
(Although, Jeff said he thought I did it on purpose to make it look more authentic…Lol!)
And here is Megan with her birthday present from us,
her very own camera (and nifty clamp on to anything tri-pod)!
She was THRILLED!!!
Which of course makes my day.
And after supper, Jeff took us all out to see
“Despicable Me”
which was quite hilarious.
A wonderful finish to our day of celebration!
