An Armadillicious Wedding Cake

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived on the small tropical island of Singapore. Instead of watching MTV Asia like all the cool kids were watching at her school, she would entertain herself by viewing the contents of her parents' eclectic videotape collection again and again. One of the movies she would watch over and over again was called Steel Magnolias--an '80s chick flick classic set in the South, featuring lots of women (including Dolly Parton) with really big hair.

In the course of this magical motion picture, the viewers witness a wedding. And in the course of this whimsical Southern wedding, the guests are served a red velvet groom's cake in the shape of an armadillo. That's right. Blood red on the inside, armadillo on the outside.

And this little girl from Singapore thought it would be cool....scratch that....the epitome of cool, if someday in the far off future, her wedding day too featured a blood-red velvet armadillo cake. She wasn't quite sure why such a cool cake would be relegated to the sidelines as a groom's cake and not the actual wedding cake itself. (Having a groom's cake in addition to a wedding cake is a peculiar tradition of the American South.) However, she also thought that Star Wars, Broadway musicals, and wearing floral leggings were cool...which is possibly why she had a miserable social life in middle school.

In any case, the little girl grew up and remained just as nerdy, but moved to the U.S. and got a Ph.D. in English, which gave her full license to be a nerd and proud of it. And then she was to be married. And so, she set about turning into reality the only detail she'd ever thought about concerning her future wedding.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present my dream wedding cake.

My best friend's sister made the cake...and did a darn fine job. She's not a professional either!

Among the other desserts, waiting to be slaughtered.

"One, two! One, two! And through and through!
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
[They] left it dead, and with its head
[They] went galumphing back."
from "The Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll

FINIS