by Carol Dunn

Created on: January 07, 2009

When you have a birthday dinner for a teenager, never mind

I should have smelled trouble brewing when we asked Ray what he would like for his birthday dinner and he said ham instead of beef jerky. I'll admit, I was wary. But I was willing to give it a try. There are so few things Ray will eat, that we needed to work with him on this. Yes, I thought warmly, we'd have ham, mashed potatoes, cantaloupe, cake and ice cream. After all, he is entitled to an extra-special family meal to celebrate each passing year.

That's what gave me the idea for the cake in cones. When I was 14, we made chocolate cake in ice cream cones in Home-Ec class. Personally, I despise chocolate cake, but everyone else in the world loves it, so chocolate it would be. In my memory, they were cute little cones of cake, so why not make those for Ray? After all, if I could make something so cute when I was only 14 years old, just think how they'd turn out for an experienced family chef. Now that I think back, there was a special recipe for the batter that goes into the cones, but it's only hindsight at this point. I whipped up chocolate cake batter from a recipe on the box of cocoa. The recipe says, "Batter will be thin." It should have read, "Batter will be like dark chocolate milk," for that is what it looked like when I began pouring it into the cones. The cones were supposed to sit in the cups of a muffin pan, but the bottoms of cones aren't really flat. They're lumpy, and the cones wanted to lean one way or another - twelve different directions for twelve contemptuous cones. The patience test had only begun. I steadied each cone and poured the dark batter into each, knowing it was a race against time to get them into the oven before the goo began to leak out through the bottoms of the cones. They were listing to varying degrees as I slid the pan into the oven, but I was optimistic. On to the frosting.

You never see cooking show personalities making frosting because it results in a coating of powdered sugar over most of the kitchen and the cook (rather like drywall dust in a remodeling project) and little splatters of frosting on anything within a five-foot radius. But the "extra-special family meal" called for Ray's favorites, not mine, chocolate splatters or not.

The ham was easy, just throw it into a pan and push the microwave/convection buttons. Whip up some mashed potatoes. Easy. Now, we throw the people into the mix, brother Will (also a teenager), three-year-old Kate, dad Ernie, and here's

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