How NOT To Impress Your Mother-In-Law

I love my mother-in-law. She is a wonderful, caring and giving person. She loves me and my children so completely. Still, regardless of this unconditional love, I feel this need to impress and please her with my cleaning and culinary skills. Yesterday...I did not! Here is my embarrassing tale....

We got home from our very fun day of shopping and skating and we start preparing for dinner. Kaylee has asked for her Mamaw's famous steak fingers, mashed potatoes and gravy and some cornbread for dinner. My only job is to make the dessert; the best homemade-from-scratch chocolate birthday cake in the world.

I don't know where I went wrong. The cake cooked and puffed up on the outside but stayed flat in the middle. It overflowed in the oven and smoked and stunk the whole house with burnt cake smell. The sides burnt onto the pan and needed to be cut off. When I took the cake out of the pan the bottom stayed in the pan. The cake was falling apart. I had to put more milk in the icing to make it thin enough that I wouldn't make a bigger mess when trying to ice the cake.

And the most embarrassing part, the part I can't believe I'm about to type? I'm still on the South Beach Diet. And this said diet gives me major gas. I mean stinky boy gas. And while all of this smoking and burning cake is going on I am stinking the kitchen up with my noxious gasses.

My mother-in-law laughed a lot!!

And she still loves me!

My family was gracious enough to eat the crazy chocolate cake and surprisingly it was still delicious (yes, I cheated on my diet. It has to be some kind of really bad luck to not have a piece of your daughter's birthday cake..right?? Well, that's the story I'm going with!!).