Bowling for Buddha

Today our dear friend Linda added another Buddha to her collection, a sculpted gold Buddha cake. We knew we wanted to make her a birthday cake she would never forget and we came up with the idea of making a gold Buddha for her. Her home is graced with Buddha figures, books on Buddhism and she even flew to Maui to hear the Dalai Lama speak. Oh, this would be PERFECT! Rick and I were both tremendously excited to make the cake for her and thought we would bring it by her home on Saturday night. Small change in plans. Linda had already assembled a group of some of her favorite women together (myself included) today for a lunchtime bowling party, and when she found out we wanted to bring a birthday cake to her she thought it would be better to share it with a group of people, not knowing of course that the cake we were bringing would be so elaborate. She said "can you bring it with you to the bowling alley?" "Sure" I said nervously after thinking about the cake Rick was making, "no problem." The bowling alley we were all meeting at has a restaurant inside that is known to have tasty food and we were going to have lunch there and then enjoy the cake.

When Linda saw her birthday cake for the first time today, her jaw dropped and I thought she was going to start crying with joy. She was so touched and excited to share Rick's creation with her friends, there was a sparkle in her eye and a silly grin on her face.

Carrying the cake into Aiea Bowl has got to be one of the strangest, most memorable deliveries we've ever made. It was positively surreal! From the second we walked through the door with the cake, we got stare after stare and people approaching us asking "is that a cake." Thank goodness I had quite a few business cards on me to pass on to the diners and bowlers who kept asking for them. I was absolutely amazed how many of the bowlers just happened to carry cameras with them and came over to take a photo. After the birthday gal blew out her candles and I made the first incision into the cake, decapitating the poor Buddha head and disassembling it from his body, there were gasps of horror at first, but then our happy lady bowlers got very excited and all I could see was plate after plate coming towards me for a piece. The birthday gal is a chocolate fiend and Rick decided to make her chocolate cake with fudge filling and she was in heaven. Between her several strikes of the day and her gold buddha chocolate cake, Linda left the bowling alley grining from ear to ear. I thought, now how are we gonna top that next year...

Happy Birthday Linda!

See Linda's Gold Buddha Cake and a huge selection of other cakes on cakelava.com.