Every year my dad picks out his own birthday cake. They’re always really… ummmm… bad. Aside from Dad’s birthday cake every year, I’ve never really met a cake I didn’t like… I’m an equal opportunity caker… even when everyone hates a cake, I manage to enjoy it anyway. So this tells you just how bad dad’s cakes are.

They sometimes come from the grocery store or a wholesale club… last year was even a really expensive super-fancy bakery cake. All awful. I’m not sure how he does it, but if there’s a bad cake in New England… he will track it down.

Today, a few hours before his birthday dinner, he ran out to Walmart (of all places) and grabbed a “variety pack” of cake. A fourth each of german chocolate, double chocolate, carrot, and red velvet cakes. This is ALWAYS a bad sign… he loves the variety pack desserts… and the variety packs are usually the worst.

Tonight… in a very bold move… I opted for half a slice of carrot and half a slice of red velvet. I was prepared for the worst. I took a big gulp of water and then dove in. OMG they were SO good!

As we discussed how good everyone’s choices were and debated why it was called red velvet cake (Dad is color blind, so this was a tough argument to win), I declared red velvet the winner for tonight. Then I announced to my family that tomorrow I would sample both of the chocolate cakes… and the next day I would then have a face-off between the winners from tonight and tomorrow night to determine the ultimate cake winner. Of course they chuckled and rolled their eyes at me (I get this reaction from them to most anything I say).

But to me… this is way more exciting than the Olympics…