Grief Cake for Bleak Kids
Parents of young Goths always struggle to find appropriate birthday cakes for their kids. It's an annual dilemma: you want to celebrate the passing of another year and the onset of maturity in your offspring. As responsible and loving parents, it would be nice to mark the passing of childhood, to look proudly into the eyes of the little tot you taught to walk, talk and maybe ride a bike and see an adult, ready to make their mark in the grown-up world.
This may be hard when the little tot has become a pre-teen beanstalk attempting to eat Cheez Stringz while wearing black lipstick. It is difficult to embrace adulthood with a 13 year old who insists on wearing a squeaky faux-leather floor length trench coat bought with a slightly more experienced Goth friend in Camden Market. How can parents realistically organise a birthday party for their child who now doesn't believe in birthdays because they have become a Vampire of the Endless Ones (on Fridays after school and most of Saturday and Sunday except when visiting Grandma)?
But the solution is here: the Grief Cake for Bleak Kids!
From the brilliant Good Housekeeping's Picture Cookery book which has featured many times before, this cake is the solution to placating the Goth child who still expects a birthday cake despite rejecting sunlight, colours and generally being upbeat .
The uneven layers and tar-like topping of the cake are depressing, and suitable for any amateur young Goth. So sad, so poorly executed, it's a stack of baked tears streaked with deathbed poetry.
The little figures on top signify the emptiness of being, the formlessness of human misery. We think we are all individuals with our own unique, bleak lives to struggle through, but really, we are just unidentifiable blobs trying to stay afloat in a sea of black hopelessness. These can be made out of marzipan or some mashed up, re-formed chicken hearts left over from a badly improvised Satanic ritual. Goths love thrift! Your Goth child will be impressed with your handy use of blood sacrifice leftovers.
Your Goth child will also appreciate the diseased and dying little people you can make to cling precariously to the side of the cake. Use lots of dessicated coconut in the pastry (Goths love coconut!) and be sure to burn the edges just enough to give your decorative figures that "singed in eternal damnation" look. Use a Hieronymous Bosch painting full of pain and suffering as inspiration. Find and apply the most unappetisting raisins you have, to make the aghast look of unending pain on the biscuit faces especially tortured.
The face of your Goth child when you reveal the Grief Cake for Bleak Kids. Revel in the misery and horror you have given to your little one; be sure to capture the grinding unhappiness drowning their soul on camera. When they cry and demand a Marks and Spencers chocolate caterpillar and promise not to wear their removable blood splatter tattoos at the dinner table any more, get them to sign that prepared contract you've had in a drawer since puberty broke into your house... and relax. These moments are what parenthood are all about.
This may be hard when the little tot has become a pre-teen beanstalk attempting to eat Cheez Stringz while wearing black lipstick. It is difficult to embrace adulthood with a 13 year old who insists on wearing a squeaky faux-leather floor length trench coat bought with a slightly more experienced Goth friend in Camden Market. How can parents realistically organise a birthday party for their child who now doesn't believe in birthdays because they have become a Vampire of the Endless Ones (on Fridays after school and most of Saturday and Sunday except when visiting Grandma)?
But the solution is here: the Grief Cake for Bleak Kids!
From the brilliant Good Housekeeping's Picture Cookery book which has featured many times before, this cake is the solution to placating the Goth child who still expects a birthday cake despite rejecting sunlight, colours and generally being upbeat .
The uneven layers and tar-like topping of the cake are depressing, and suitable for any amateur young Goth. So sad, so poorly executed, it's a stack of baked tears streaked with deathbed poetry.
The little figures on top signify the emptiness of being, the formlessness of human misery. We think we are all individuals with our own unique, bleak lives to struggle through, but really, we are just unidentifiable blobs trying to stay afloat in a sea of black hopelessness. These can be made out of marzipan or some mashed up, re-formed chicken hearts left over from a badly improvised Satanic ritual. Goths love thrift! Your Goth child will be impressed with your handy use of blood sacrifice leftovers.
Your Goth child will also appreciate the diseased and dying little people you can make to cling precariously to the side of the cake. Use lots of dessicated coconut in the pastry (Goths love coconut!) and be sure to burn the edges just enough to give your decorative figures that "singed in eternal damnation" look. Use a Hieronymous Bosch painting full of pain and suffering as inspiration. Find and apply the most unappetisting raisins you have, to make the aghast look of unending pain on the biscuit faces especially tortured.
The face of your Goth child when you reveal the Grief Cake for Bleak Kids. Revel in the misery and horror you have given to your little one; be sure to capture the grinding unhappiness drowning their soul on camera. When they cry and demand a Marks and Spencers chocolate caterpillar and promise not to wear their removable blood splatter tattoos at the dinner table any more, get them to sign that prepared contract you've had in a drawer since puberty broke into your house... and relax. These moments are what parenthood are all about.
