06/08/2026
"There and Back Again, A Ducky's Tale" by Duckbill Baggins
This past week did not go as planned. Our granddaughter's first birthday is today, and we planned to celebrate in PA with my family on Sunday, while we were already gathered for my niece's grad party.
My daughter's family has been battling a nasty cold, and she & the kids were feeling well enough to make the 3 hour drive, but dad had to stay home. 😢 Still planned to do the party, so I made this sweet ducky cake on Friday, got it well chilled, and then packed it up for the drive.
I'm not sure about other people, but my parents *never* have space in the fridge, so we kept it in a cooler in the basement until Sunday morning. All through this, the heavy fondant bill has stayed perfectly in place, but I kept waiting for it to break off.
When I woke up Sunday morning, I found out our youngest daughter (who already had the same cold as everyone else) was now sick. She has this strange unnamed condition that causes her to throw up every time she catches the slightest cold bug. 🤢 Not fun, and even though she's 16 and we know what to expect, it still sucks.
Well, the party got cancelled, and all the Ohio people packed up in a mass exodus. With the cake coming back to my house in the hopes we could celebrate all together today. And some of us will, but not how we planned, bc on the off chance this bug was a new one, none of us want it circulating any more than necessary.
So tonight, the ones in my house will get to eat her 3 day old birthday cake, and I'll be making a new smaller one for her for next weekend.
I'm curious how it will taste compared to a fresh cake. I *always* send out cakes as fresh as possible, hopefully assembling and decorating the day of the party so that my customers get to enjoy the full shelf life of the cake if there are leftovers. Since I don't use any preservatives in my bakes, I really don't know how long "it's good for."
I'll get back with you on my findings!
