Storytime: A cake worthy of words

The newlyweds were living and working in the city, squeezed into Mariah’s tiny apartment until the lease was up and they could move on.

I thought my youngest daughter and her broad-shouldered husband, Tanner, made a striking couple. And things seemed to be going fine until I called Mariah on her May birthday.

Something was wrong.

“Mom,” Mariah whispered into the phone.

“What’s the matter, Mariah?” I asked, teasing a bit. “Did Tanner forget your birthday?”

“Well …,” Mariah said with a sigh, the kind you make when you have something to tell but you don’t know how to tell it.

“What?” I asked, puzzled by her hushed whispers. “Did he get you a present?”

“Yes,” Mariah answered, her voice suddenly lighter as she spoke of his thoughtful gifts.

“Did he give you a birthday card signed with something other than his name?” I asked her, joking but not joking.

"A really sweet card,” Mariah replied.

He signed his name and included a note, which is the greeting-card etiquette Mariah grew up with.

What could possibly be the matter?

“Don’t tell me you didn’t get cake? Surely Tanner knows that birthdays come with cake,” I said with humor in my voice.

“Oh, he got me cake alright.”

I heard it then, what she wasn’t saying.

“Surely he did not come home with a yellow cake.”

The silence on the other end confirmed what I didn’t want to hear.

“A yellow cake, really? What was he thinking!” I screeched, only now I was whispering too.

“I don’t know,” Mariah wailed. “I don’t know what to do!”

“Well, you have to nip this right now. You need to talk to him!” I told my daughter.

This could not continue.

My family is not made up of cake experts, but we certainly know our way around cake. We have tried and tested cakes of every shape and color and come to a conclusion.

Nobody wants yellow cake.

What is yellow cake exactly — what flavor is it? It’s not lemon or vanilla or butter or cornbread, so what is “yellow” supposed to taste like? Why would anyone choose it?

My newlywed daughter went on to confess she didn’t want to tell her husband that we don’t do yellow because he made such a tender effort on her birthday, and she didn’t want Tanner to think she didn’t appreciate it.

“Mariah, it’s yellow cake!”

Cakes are made to meet the occasion. If you want a dinner cake, try a Texas sheet cake or a German chocolate. For Sunday dinner, how about a poke cake or a dump cake or an upside-down cake?

Yellow cake is not part of any recipe.

If you are celebrating anything that needs a cake with writing, it better be a white cake, the kind with frosting flowers in the corners and a rick-rack of icing around the edges. On your birthday, there is something about a decorated cake and the springy freshness of the white cake underneath the icing.

No one wants to cut a pretty cake and find yellow inside.

When Mariah put her husband on the phone, I asked Tanner about the bakery where he got the cake and the other flavors they offered.

“All kinds,” he replied with enthusiasm.

“Oh,” I said out loud, before I could stop myself.

“What? Wait. She didn’t like the cake, did she?” Tanner said, suddenly taken to whispering.

When I asked him about the flavor of yellow cake, he was stumped. With no other explanation, I simply told Tanner all he needed to know.

Then I informed my son-in-law that he was lucky to learn this critical lesson early on. If you have a message you want printed on a cake, it better be a good one. If it is worth the words, the cake better be word-worthy. So bring on that cake.

It just better not be yellow.

You can reach Lorry at lorrysstorys@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Storytime: A cake worthy of words