I was planning on baking tonight, but I was going to make cookies. My nephew and his girlfriend, wife-to-be next month, will make one of their rare and much anticipated visits tomorrow. Since my brother wants to go out to eat at a Mexican restaurant with everyone who is coming, I knew I'd have time on my hands tonight and planned to make cookies the "kids" (they are both in their mid-twenties) could take with them. I figured we'd all be too full from the restaurant experience to eat dessert, but cookies are easily transportable and people their age burn calories like a furnace. Especially when they're in the military like they both are. They are always having fitness tests they have to pass and have to stay in great shape for them.
Well my brother called, after dinner tonight and finally told me where he wanted to eat tomorrow and asked me to make a birthday cake for his son. I was a bit annoyed at the late notice, because the nephew's birthday was last month, and I wasn't anticipating it. I agreed to shift gears and bake a birthday cake without saying a word about the late notice. My brother is well aware I have no car and can't just run out anytime and shop for ingredients, so he offered to bring me ingredients tomorrow. This would be too late, as the only time I had to bake was tonight. I used what I had on hand on hand.
I made a yellow cake with a cocoa marble made with part of the batter swirled through it. I made it in this Nordic Ware Christmas Wreath bundt pan, which would be totally inappropriate for a belated birthday cake except for one thing. My nephew gave the pan to me for Christmas a few years ago on one of his rare visits, and I have never made him a cake in it. Don't know when I'll get another chance either, as he has a lot going on in his life, and I have no way to travel. He hasn't visited at Christmas since he gave the pan to me. I was afraid the sort of intricate design would stick in the pan, but I had no trouble at all releasing it intact after cooling in a bit in the pan.
This was the first cake I have cooked in my 1970's GE electric oven in years after it finally got a working thermostat. Edited to clarify: I have made other cakes in the broken oven without a thermostat, but it is beyond challenging. It requires an oven thermometer, a timer and much diligence. God, I love my working thermostat!
This cake came out very well, I think. I glazed it with a dark chocolate glaze made from 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, a cup confectioners sugar, a t. vanilla, salt that the recipe did not call for (but I think makes the taste of the glaze) and enough boiling water for consistency. Second edit: there were also 3 T butter melted with the chocolate for the glaze.
I stuck a plastic pick I had that says "Happy Birthday" in it and put five birthday candles in it for the five of his 25 years. I thought about some multi-colored non-pareils I had in the pantry, which always says birthday to me, but I do not appreciate their hard crunchiness disrupting the texture of a cake. I keep them for sugar cookies which are already a bit hard and crunchy.
Sorry I have no picture, but like the car, and a cell phone, or any sort of camera, I just don't have a lot of things. I do have a lot of love for my nephew, though, and I hope my homemade, and homely cake conveys that. 
