The cake is a lie. It's always a lie.

[thatcrazyredhead]

Mmmm, I love buttermilk pie! There's a restaurant where I grew up that had the most delicious homemade pies, and their buttermilk was one of my favorites.

[bainsidhe]

Now granted I work in a very small office, but our rule is you bring a treat to share for your own birthday. We've had deli sandwiches, bagels, cheesecake, twizzlers, chips....whatever we feel like really.

[ArcticChicken]

ArcticChicken, I will love you forever if you get me that recipe. I'm still hunting for the perfect carrot cake recipe, maybe this is it!

Well, if it isn't, it comes pretty damn close. I'm not home right now, but I'll post it sometime tomorrow.

[tropicsgoddess]

*offers yellow cake cake with vanilla icing* Have you ever tried Amish Friendship bread? You can make so many different flavors out of it and it tastes so good if's slightly toasted with butter!

[Becks]

Now granted I work in a very small office, but our rule is you bring a treat to share for your own birthday.

I worked at a place that did that.

Hated it.

The ones who would bitch the most about what the birthday person brought in (or that the birthday person didn't bring ANYTHING in) were always the ones who never brought in goodies or requested off for that day.

Me? I always took in kringles.

[RealUnimportant]

I've worked places where it was considered "normal" to bring stuff in on your birthday, but I never took anyone else's sh*tty food so I never supplied anything on my day either... Rarely if ever let anyone know when my birthday was anyway!

[Pixilated]

Aww, thanks guys. I know I'm just whining and it's not a major issue, but sympathy feels nice.

*snip*

Nah, not whining. Comparatively speaking it may not be huge issue but it's still rather ...

I didn't quite get the picture -- is she buying one cake for several people's birthdays or is it just "your" cake? If it's the former, is there somebody else who might be willing to bring in something you can eat? Much as I love chocolate, if I were the 'someone else' I'd be happy to bring in cupcakes or pie or whatever.

If the latter, I definitely second trying to talk to her again. If she's not doing this with malice aforethought and is just scatterbrained, perhaps she'd feel it would help to remind her, maybe the day before she goes to buy the cake, that you can't eat chocolate?

Also, I am curious about this chocolate allergy ... for those who react badly to it, does its mere presence in the room cause a reaction, or do you actually have to ingest it?

[mharbourgirl]

Oooh, I'm gonna get some good recipes here, this is awesome. Friendship bread? I lost the old recipe last time I moved, excellent. Buttermilk pie? This is new, and it sounds promising. Hell with it, just send me all the cake/pie recipes, I've got a serious baking jones going on now.

And when February comes around, I'm bring in a large stack of rice krispie squares with extra sticky, because I love them, I can eat them, and February is MY birthday month so I'll be damned if I'm going to be left out AGAIN.

Pixelated, it's one big cake in the first week of the month for everyone who has a birthday that month. Slap it down on the boardroom counter and hope there's enough for everyone who wants some, sort of fing.

As for the chocolate issue, for me it's not an allergy. No hives, no airway swelling, no rashes. It directly affects my brain chemistry, and since theobromine is only present in the cocoa itself, I can eat 'white chocolate', which is actually just cocoa butter and sugar, with impunity (well, aside from the fact that all that fat and sugar isn't exactly healthy!). White-chocolate macadamia nut cookies. Mmmm. Now, I suffer from a mild case of eczema (due to stress and my inability to completely avoid dairy products all the time), and if I'm having a flare-up of THAT, chocolate will make it worse, but if my skin is clear chocolate won't make it break out. So I usually don't say I'm allergic to chocolate, because being in the room with it won't hurt me, it'll just make me sad.

[dalesys]

Mmmm, I love buttermilk pie!

There's a recipe at http://customerssuck.com/board/showt...067#post575067.

[ArcticChicken]

OK, here it is. I'm going to put the original recipe and some notes, those'll be in italics.

CARROT CAKE

2 Cups Flour (all purpose)
2 tsp Baking Powder
1 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
2 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Salt
4 Eggs
2 Cups Sugar
1 1/2 Cups Wesson Oil Brand not specific, and vegetable/canola oil will do
2 Cups Carrots, grated not fine
1 Medium Can Crushed Pineapple squeeze out water and chop a little
1/2 Cup Pecans half nuts size

Mix dry ingredients, flour, baking powder, soda, salt and cinnamon. Mix eggs, Wesson Oil, and Sugar. Mix the two above separately and then add together. Add carrots, crushed pineapple and pecans. Pour into 3 9-inch baking pans, coated with Pam, and bake 35 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Sometimes 30 minutes, do not overbake, let cool before removing from pans.

ICING

1 Box Confectioners Sugar 3/4 box enough
1 Stick Butter
1 8-oz package Philadelphia cream cheese.
1 tsp Vanilla Extract.

Mix sugar, butter, cream cheese, and extract and cover each layer.

I personally don't add the pecans, but that's because I hate the texture of nuts, I'm told by those who like nuts that it's a very good variation. The pineapple really does wonders for the cake.

[Sakka]

Also, I am curious about this chocolate allergy ... for those who react badly to it, does its mere presence in the room cause a reaction, or do you actually have to ingest it?

For me, there are a lot of variables. On a good day, I can eat a little bit and not worry. On a bad day, after a bite I may spend two to three hours in the loo with my stomach trying to escape, then four to six hours later, the same thing from the other end.
On a really bad day, I'll be eating anti-runs medicine like it's candy or going out of style. And it'll still take two to three days before the medicine starts to work. Then I go from one extreme to the other.
Most of the time, the scent of chocolate will produce a gag/retch respone in me, but most of the time it has to be on someones breath who is WAY too close to me, or shoved into my face. Generally if it's just sitting on a table, it's not a problem. Curiously, I have the same reaction to coffee. (Have only had one sip, with LOTS of milk mixed in. Still felt like I was gonna throw up for a few hours afterwards)

Made growing up lots of fun, especially as almost everyone I knew insisted on having chocolate something for birthdays. Add in an allergy/sensitivity to nuts and asthma, and growing up was loads of fun.

Have one relative who is a chocolate snob and was always pushing chocolate on the 'kids' (myself and various cousins). After repeated reqests from parents and myself not to do that, and getting annoyed that the relative just. would. not. listen. After eating a very big meal, I ate some chocolate. And promptly threw up on said relative. Once the noise died down, parents did point out that they had told relative many many many times that I can't eat chocolate and not to give me any. (Helped that I didn't have a high opinion of that relative or the offspring)

Through some experimentation, I have found that I can eat white chocolate most of the time, some brands add something that makes my throat itch. Cheaper chocolate that is more filler then actual chocolate, I don't react to as bad as the good high quality chocolate. This is good, as there have been some days where the good effects it has on my neural chemistry has been worth the bad effects it has on my body.


I've thought of trying to hide when my birthday is, a couple days before Valentine's Day, but I tend to get just too cranky at that time of the year for it to be effective.

[BeenThereDoneThat]

When I was an Admin Assistant I was often in charge of arranging such things. There were people who couldn't eat chocolate or just plain didn't LIKE chocolate for whatever reason...so I think I tried to stick to yellow cakes unless maybe someone specifically requested chocolate. It's hard to remember now but you are hardly the only one who would be very unhappy at never being able to share in the goodies because there's always chocolate involved. I hope your coworker will listen to reason

[Flying Grype]

When my office did birthdays, thank goodness they didn't make everybody take a turn -- that implies that everyone had to pay out of pocket for birthday goodies. Sorry, I'm the minimum-wage temp, your cake will be... not much. :P The birthday cakes actually came out of the department's party budget. The lady who was in charge of procuring cakes had a good memory for stuff like that. I don't think there were any allergies, but there were a couple of Muslims so cakes had to be alcohol-free (e.g. no classic coffee-and-booze-soaked tiramisu). She even remembered, at least for people who had worked there a while, what their favourite cakes were. The default, if she didn't have that data, was to get a fruit mousse sponge cake from the Chinese bakery up the street. :9

[the_std]

I, too, feel your pain. At my store, every time there is something important going on, they bring in one of three things - pizza, cake or cookies. Guess who is the only person in the store who can't eat gluten? So I, too, get that left out feeling, but honestly, I can't really say anything about it. It's a store with a staff of over 80 people, and I am the only person with this problem, so I can't reasonably expect them to do anything else, cause pizza/cake/cookies are cheap, store well, and are easy to get. My only real wish was that they give us some advance notice that they were doing this stuff, so I could bring in something of my own so I didn't have to sit there and watch people eat delicious pizza.

[ArcticChicken]

My aunt, who can't eat gluten, will sometimes eat the toppings off pizza so she can have a bit of a treat. Though I suppose that depends how sensitive you are.

Also, just something I have to share with anyone who'd gluten free, are you aware of Pamela's. It's a line of gluten free baking stuff, and I haven't tried anything of theirs I don't like. I'm not gluten free myself, but 3 members of my immediate family are, and I love to bake, so I've spent a lot of time looking at gluten free recipes. I actually would take Pamela's pancake mix for preference over any store bought non-gluten free mix.