I’m making a cake for Christmas.

I know what you’re going to say.

“So?”

My holiday MO, other than being my initials, is vowing to make a homemade cake, ignoring my vow for as long as possible, then driving a few miles to my favorite bakery and ordering one. Then when Christmas day comes, I can feel pride when I put that beautiful cake out on the table with the Christmas cookies, and watch as no one eats it.

Your family might be a dessert family. Good for you. My extended family is all about the food. The breakfast casserole, the cheeses, the dips, the prime rib, the ziti, the caprese salad, and the roast beef au jus. Desserts following the meal in my house is like the opening act following the headliner, and everyone is just drifting out of the stadium to get into their cars before the traffic gets bad.

I don’t even think it has anything to do with being full, or people on diets and not eating “sweets.” It’s just this massive Christmas holiday dessert…indifference, I guess.

I try something new every year. One year I made a layered pumpkin mousse trifle. Barely touched. Another year I ordered a Piecaken from Goldbelly. Barely touched. Another year I drove an hour to a “famous pie place,” and unveiled it on Christmas day in a grand fashion. After the initial “Ooooooohhhh,” it was barely touched. Cheesecake, pecan pie, homemade lemon meringue. Barely touched. And my boys don’t eat that stuff, not even doughnuts, so I end up putting the whole thing in the freezer, waiting until July when it’s finally freezer-burned, and then tossing it.

But I continue on, undaunted, in my search for a dessert that will get my family’s attention. Give it up, you say? Indeed not. Deciding on a dessert to throw in the trash in July is a tradition that I am unwilling to relinquish. And I’ve been saving this beautiful cake recipe for months.

This one will have three layers, homemade frosting, and filled with such a lovely and difficult to concoct confectionary delight that I won’t even reveal it here. And since the whole of my family thinks I’m full of it and therefore doesn’t read my blog, they won’t even know my plans.

So this is between you and me.

I’ll let you know in the New Year how it went. Tomorrow tune in for my last blog of the year, and a sage piece of advice: stay ever vigilant, my friends. If you don’t watch her, January can be a real bitch.