Biergarten Birthday

Luke turned five on July 20. We had a great birthday party for him at Jaegerholz-Sliders Biergarten. Yep. A kids’ party at a bar. But it’s not like you might think. They have a great playground, mini-golf, kegelbahn (like bowling) a soccer goal, and a big grassy area for running and playing. The kids had a ball. The theme was Legos, so we had a Lego table for playing and a table with crayons and Lego pictures to color. One table had face paints and two of my very artistic friends took turns coloring kids. I brought my hula hoops for both adults and children and we played games and hooped our hearts out. Sliders served up chicken tenders, fries, calamari rings, fried mushrooms, mozzarella sticks, nachos, and pitchers of beer for the adults and soda and apfelsaft schorle (carbonated apple juice) for the kids.

I tried to bake three Lego-shaped cakes using loaf pans and muffins for the dots. They flopped. So I switched to marshmallows for the dots, which worked better. But I overcooked the cakes and the icing was too thick. I felt a little betrayed. On the Betty Crocker website it had looked so easy. Come on, Betty! I expect Martha Stewart to make us moms feel inferior, but you are our saving grace! You enable us to whip up last-minute cupcakes for school parties with a box, an egg and a cup of oil and feel like we accomplished something. But not with this recipe. It was tough. Or maybe it was just me. To redeem myself, I also made a carrot cake with a Duncan Hines mix, throwing in some real shaved carrots and pecans to make it seem more homemade. I used cream cheese frosting from a can and sprinkled the top with pecans. I then spelled out LUKE in Legos. It was pretty good. But I was embarrassed when one of my German friends asked for the recipes for the cakes. I said, “Well, they’re secret American recipes from my Aunt Betty and Uncle Duncan.”

The Americans got it and laughed, and I was forced to explain. Talk about embarrassing. I assured them, though, that I had plenty of homemade cake recipes if they wanted something authentic. I don’t really want them to know that most of us American moms are way more like Betty than Martha.