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(First, I will say that the picture above is a Green Tea Cake. I never had it and I assume it’s yummy. I chose it for the color, which is important to the following story.)
Being Jewish, one of the worst times you can have your birthday is in April. You run the risk of it falling within the days of Passover. Why is this bad? Because one of the big things about Passover is that you can’t eat ‘leavened bread’. This means anything that rises like bread, rolls, pies, pasta, rice (I know certain sects do eat this on Passover, Squirt.), and cakes. So if your birthday falls on this, you have a few options. Go without cake, break the rules, or have a Kosher for Passover cake. Here’s a tale of when my mom took the third option:
Two of my friends came over for fun and cake. Now, I think this was one of the first years my birthday was placed under Passover rules. It had fallen on the holiday before, but I still got pizza and normal cake on those days. Guess I was being shown how to be an adult and this event sure didn’t help.
My mom bought a Kosher for Passover cake, which you can assume wasn’t a big seller even on the holiday. Well, she cut us each a slice and the first thing I notice is that the yellow cake inside the chocolate had green spots. Not fuzzy or gross, but green. So my mom said it was supposed to look like that. After all, it’s not a normal cake, so why would the color be normal? One friend did the smart thing and ate around the green spots. Me and the other friend were less cautious.
This thing tasted like gasoline smells. Seriously. You ever take a bite of something and you just know it’s how a foul stench would taste if you bit the source? That would be this atrocity of a cake. My mom thought I was overreacting since I had been complaining about being denied pizza and a real cake. She took one bite and was off to the store with the remains to get a refund. Also an ice cream cake. Come to think of it, this might be why my family sticks to homemade cakes (my sister the scientist/baker) and ice cream cakes.
Anyway, the green cake story still gets brought up today. It’s burned into my memory and I get nervous whenever I hear ‘Kosher for Passover’. Though, I’ve called the rule that my birthday is a day off from the holiday. Just for that one slice of pizza and a cake I know hasn’t been sitting on the shelf since Moses listened to his GPS to cross the desert.