Happy Birthday to You... and Many More!!!

So this week there are no holidays; however, earlier this week was my 18th and half birthday! No, I don't do anything for half birthdays, but I figured it would be interesting to see what other people do to celebrate their birthdays.

Unfortunately I was pretty disappointed with the results. All anyone seemed to want to talk about was cake. That is it, except for my one smart alack friend who talked about how every year on his birthday he adds one to his previous year- meaning on his birthday this year, he is currently 18, he will tell everyone he is, 19- which he will be. He was just being annoying and saying he literally turns a year older each year, like EVERYONE else. One other friend didn't mention cake either, since her birthday falls on Memorial Day, see my last post, and therefore everyone always forgets about it. Her one redeeming factor is the fact that there are always great Memorial Day sales.

So, let's move onto the delicious cake. There are lots of different cakes my friends have on their birthdays. A few friends said their go to birthday cake is ice cream cake. My one friend, who worked at an ice cream store, would always make the cake for her birthday party, so we would have something personalized to eat after a round of birthday laser tag. Another friend, said she always has to have sprinkles on her cake to make it a birthday cake. The final friend I asked said she always has a cookie cake. Apparently her dad complains every year because he feels like a cookie cake is not cake and he is being deprived of a true birthday cake.

Picture By: CJ Sorg

Well, all this talk about cake made me think about my cake tradition. In my house on every birthday we don't have a normal cake, we have the infamous "Glatzer Family Birthday Cake." This cake consists of levels of chocolate pudding and graham crackers. To make the cake you have to use cook and serve pudding, no instant pudding, whole milk, and normal graham crackers for the cake to be successful. Since my mom normally makes the cake, she has tried changing some of these ingredients and it never works, as there is only one way to make the real "Glatzer Family Birthday Cake." The "recipe" came from my grandmother and it truly is as simple as it sounds: cook the pudding and put a layer of it in on top of a base of gram crackers in a glass container, followed by graham cracker, alternating until you get to the top layer of pudding, which is normally about 4 layers up, then pop it in the fridge and enjoy when it is cooled. Any extra pudding is eaten off the spoon by whoever's birthday it is. Normally, the cake is made the night before so it has time to set.

When it is time to eat the cake it is topped with the one and only chocolate whipped cream. The person whose birthday it is has their piece served on the "Glatzer Family Birthday Plate" which my mom made when we were younger at a pottery painting place, similar to 2000 degrees downtown. The plate is speckled green with a cake in the center and it says "Glatzer Family Birthday Plate." Any other meal we eat throughout the day is served on the birthday plate also. Sometimes we will go out for a birthday dinner, which a lot of my friends also mentioned doing in addition to eating cake, in that case the birthday plate just isn't used for dinner.

Since I'm on the topic of my birthday celebration, there are two other traditions we have in my house. My mom always puts up decorations in our house, with the standard number representing our age on the back of the front door and often streamers going down the stairs or banners hanging from the molding. The decorations are never exactly the same but a nice touch.

Photo By: Alaine Ashton

 For my mom's birthday, we try our best to do the same but never manage the same decorations she does for the rest of us. She also manages to put balloons in our rooms and then the rest of the family, including the dog if we can wake her up, walks into the birthday person's room and sings happy birthday to wake them up.

A simple tradition but one none the less I know will come every year and I look forward to it.

So, what do you do for you birthday and of course what kind of cake do you eat? Share in the comments!