Sometimes life gets crazy-hectic-busy.  That’s how it’s been lately around our house.  I still have trouble believing it’s been three months since Christmas.  I know!!!  I won’t even go there because I just can’t. But today… this entry isn’t about baking really… though I guess in a way it is.  It’s more about Eddie Bells and what trouble he can stir up. I mean, look, he prodded me to make this cake!

Many years ago, when I was still interested in climbing the corporate ladder I worked for a very dynamic woman “L”.  She was a great boss and I learned a lot from her.  Not just career-stuff, but life-stuff too like “quite often you’ll find it’s your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude“.  L was a single mother and used to talk about her son J quite a bit.  At the time, J was in his late teens or early twenties and an extremely talented artist on his way to a fabulous career.  One of those stories has stuck with me all these years.

When J was small, I think about 3-4, he would talk about his friend Eddie Bells all the time.  Everytime J wanted to be like all the other kids and ask his mother if he could do it to, if L said no little J would pout and say “but why not mom, Eddie Bells is”.  This happened on quite a regular basis where J would come back with “Eddie Bells can” or “Eddie Bells did” or whatever.  Eddie Bells was a part of all sorts of things that went on with J but his mother L had never met him.

One night when J was told no to something he got very upset and in tears said “it’s not fair!  it’s not fair! Eddie Bells gets to do EVERYTHING and I never get to do ANYTHING”.  Pretty upset herself L responded “well, I don’t know who this Eddie Bells is and I’ve never met his mother but I’m sure she doesn’t let him do ‘EVERYTHING’”.  Turns out “Eddie Bells” was little J’s way of saying “everybody else” :)  So when he wanted to do something and his mother would say no, J was trying to explain that “everybody else is”… and it was coming out as “Eddie Bells is” :)

About a year or two after I stopped working for L, her son J tragically passed away very unexpectedly following a very brief illness.  At his funeral I remembered many things that L had told me but what I kept thinking about was the Eddie Bells story.  It’s been about 15 years ago now and I still think about “Eddie Bells”.  Last Friday night I had my very own “Eddie Bells Moment”.  You see, I was making the rounds of my favorite food blogs and checking out what had been posted on both Tastespotting and Food Gawker and was feeling kinda blue.  It seemed like everybody else was baking something fantastic!  Everybody else… but me :(

I wanted to make something fabulous and luscious… but to say I was exhausted would be a supreme understatement.  A few days back when I had made the St. Patrick’s Day cupcakes, I took the leftover batter and baked it up into a 6″ little cake… just because.  Then I wrapped it up and stuck it in the freezer figuring I’d use it at some point.  And back when I made the French Yogurt cake, I made a batch of lemon curd and there was still some left.  And I always have a bit of buttercream icing in the fridge.  So I decided to defrost the cake, slice it horizontally, fill it with lemon curd and frost it with buttercream icing :)  I thought it looked a little “plain” so in my stash I had a bit of shredded coconut and I colored it yellow… then pressed it into the top and sides of the cake for looks :)  And yes, at that point, I was part of the “in crowd” too :)

Well… that’s the story of my Eddie Bells cake… a cake I made just cuz everybody else was making something. I simply didn’t want to be left out and since Eddie Bells had baked something I wanted to bake something too.  Sure it’s a little bit “competitive” and a little bit like “peer-pressure” but isn’t it funny what Eddie Bells can make you do :)

Have a delicious day!

  src="http://signatures.mylivesignature.com/54486/313/2F9B6626815A7DEDA50FC96
E870F3868.png" style="border: none; background: transparent;"/>