Barnabas Monkeypants

For Henry’s first birthday (lo those many months ago), we bought a big cake for the guests and a big cupcake for the birthday boy. This worked out well (though the big cake was too big and the big cupcake wasn’t big enough to satisfy Henry’s baked-goods appetite).

We got the cakes at the Swedish Bakery, a place just south of us in the Andersonville neighborhood. (If you want to go back and relive the birthday magic, you can read about it here and here.)

Quick aside: Chicago, for those not in the know, is a city full of different neighborhoods, many of which were various ethnic groups settled when they came to the city. So, Andersonville was where the Swedes came. Logan Square was the Norwegians. Lincoln Square the Germans. And you’ll never guess who moved into Ukrainian Village! (I really like this city.)

Anyway, when I ordered the cakes, I had asked if they made tiny little cakes to match up with the big ones. While they had small cakes, they were fancy ones, with berries and fancy fillings and fondit, stuff that Henry would probably not really like. He wants 1) cake and 2) frosting. That’s it.

So instead, I asked for a cupcake. Not a regular cupcake, but the biggest cupcake they had. And they delivered. It was tasty.

Fast forward five months. This past weekend, Kristen wanted… no needed a cupcake. So Henry and I headed off to the Swedish Bakery to get cupcakes. We were waited on by the woman who took the cake order for his birthday.

“You’ll never guess,” she said.

(I have no idea what she meant, but I went along with it.”

“What?”

“Because of you, we’re now making smash cakes.”

“Uh… great?”

Now, if you’re like me (and not really aware of such things), you ask what a smash cake is, and you’ll be told that they’re little cakes that you give to kids so that they can go all Animal on them. Crush them. Mutilate them. Smash them. (And possibly eat them.)

“You did that all for Henry,” I asked.

“Well, not for him, but it made us realize that somebody will buy them if we offer them.”

So there you have it. Henry is singlehandedly changing the face of baked goods for children in the north side of Chicago.

(Now that I read this, it doesn’t seem as exciting as it was on Saturday. No wonder Kristen wasn’t very interested when I called her breathlessly from the parking lot.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 3:59 pm and is filed under Barnabas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.