Celebrating colleague's birthday with homemade fruitcake and 1m long pizzas!

This cake was just as much of a surprise to the birthday man as it was to all of us. With the busy schedule we have and all the pandemic shenanigans, it has become increasingly difficult to spend time together outside of work.

We have grown into a loosely tight family rather than just colleagues. My colleague called me up suddenly and invited me over for a very small and humble party at his place. Little did I know we were in for a big homemade surprise.

We have a very special connection since we both same share the same ethnicity. Both of us have also built a life in this country and have done so many unbelievable things together.

If you are asking why is everything on the floor...because it is part of our original tradition. We all sit on the floor where all the food is decorated on a beautiful mat and humbly break bread together.

Any celebration in our tradition is incomplete with the greatest snack of all times: Chana Chur. Think of it like a very royal trail mix developed over years but started out as a roadside food stall snack.

Chana Chur usually is made with various mixes of fried onions, roasted peanuts, chickpeas, flaked rice, cashew nuts, almonds, fried lentils, curry leaves, and different forms and shapes of fried and spiced besan.

The dinner was 2 huge pizzas from Mafia restaurant. Two 1-meter long pizzas. One with mushroom and chicken, the other 4 cheese. He also brought extra sushi roll sets for the ladies. Trust me, they love sushi.

I personally like the cheese rolls otherwise everything depends on my mood. There was enough soda for everyone but I decided to go with green tea and lemon. Nothing beats good green tea.

As good as the food was, it was a bit too much for all of us. We spent most of the time laughing about old times, reminiscing on the times spend and the people that have come and gone. We spoke a little about work and chatted a lot about the invasion that could start from our city.

Oh, while we were very seriously considering our futures amid this high-tension invasion, Amir, my colleague's son came around with the best drink you could think of.

I don't know if this drink is a dream come true for kids with the sweetest tooth or is it straight out disgusting. But it was super entertaining. A fistful of marshmallows in a cup of coca-cola. He also added a marshmallow as a drink hat. Creative!

We then pulled out the sparks and set the mood for cutting the cake. There were two cakes. I brought one along with me from the closest bakery. The other one was a total show stopper.

My colleague's wife decided to make this beautiful cake. It is a layered fruit cake topped with berries and kiwi and oranges and pineapples. On one side it is topped with a line of marshmallows and the entire thing is covered with a layer of jelly.

The top layer is a frozen chocolate one which she made by melting chocolate and freezing it after topping it with the fruits. The layer below the chocolate is made with mangoes and then a layer of cake. The middle layer is thinly sliced pineapples. Each layer is lined with Mascarpone Italian cheese with really brought all of this together.

She went easy with the sugar since our birthday man, who hit 40, has diabetes. Nevertheless, this cake was better than all the cakes I have ever tasted from any bakery in the city. Incredible work and a pleasant surprise for all of us.

Oh, this is Bagira, the special guest of the party. She wasn't very impressed with the cake. She left us alone to spend quality time with her scratching pole.

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