I baked a red velvet for my cousin's birthday yesterday and we took her out for dinner.

She is 64 years old and insists that she doesn't look her age. She always brings it up so people will tell her she looks 21, and she laughs and laughs.







When I was growing up, my grandmother always made a from scratch angel food cake for our birthdays, frosted with an orange glaze. She cut slits into the baked cake and inserted a button, a quarter, a penny, a ring, and so on and they meant something for the person who found one of them in his or her piece of cake. The button meant you were going to be an old maid or bachelor, the larger coin meant wealth, the penny meant poverty, the ring meant happy marriage.

There was always an extra candle on the cake 'to grow on' and after the candles were blown out, every one sang:

"They say that our Grandma* she ain't go no style
Ain't got no style
Ain't got no style

But we say our Grandma, she's got her style
She's got her style
She's got her style

Sty-le all the whi-el."

I don't know what the tune was, something old-fashioned.

*fill in the name of the birthday person