birthday cake mush

we had our first dinner party. we had marie m. who i knew from new york days and daniel who i know from computer graphics days. daniel’s wife, valerie came as well as daphne, his 20 year old daughter. daniel and daphne had come out to tuscany 17 years ago when valerie was pregnant with ariel, their son. so i know daphne more as a 3 year old, than a 20 year old. also present was jj’s friend, a. it was sort of jj’s birthday dinner in that her birthday is on the 10th and that she spent 3 days working on a cake that she found in a book. it was an ice cream meringue layered cake and she decided that she wanted to make the caramel ice cream too. i can’t help being skeptical. i have tried many times to make ice cream and think it is impossible without a special machine. sorbet is possible but generally, i feel ice cream is not worth the effort. p scolds me rightfully, for being so discouraging. she actually succeeded with the ice cream. she made the meringue and fancy chocolate laces for decorations. it was a very ambitious project and i was impressed with her resolve and focus. unfortunately, she overwhipped the cream/marscapone mix which went from being liquid, to firm to liquid again. at that point, she was getting upset, so i told her to just put it all together anyway. the ice cream melted quickly and it came to the table as a big pile of mush. we had to eat it fast. it tasted good all the same.

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