And we’re back! It’s been a somewhat longer hiatus than expected and I hope you’ve managed to fill your time somehow.

This ABBA-themed bat mitzvah cake was a very long time in the planning. You may recall my musings upon gluten-free cake way back in May. Well, since then I have completely mastered the genre (or more specifically, I’ve mastered delicious gluten-free chocolate cake and haven’t actually tried any other recipes. But this one was truly stupendous). Did you know that gluten-free flour in Israel costs nearly 10X that of wheat flour? Sobering, I know.

The time had finally come to decorate! I think my favourite part was creating the ABBA singer figurines. I especially loved their 70s-era Go Go boots, bell bottom pants, and long hair.

The figure in the middle represents the bat mitzvah girl herself, appropriately named Mia. She, her siblings and her mom dressed up in white jump suits and wigs for the party and, accompanied by a band, performed a full set of ABBA songs at Jerusalem’s First Station in front of hundreds of people. It blew me away.

Did you know you could order personalized M & M candies? Mia’s mom did!

The bat mitzvah party took place on Sunday night but the family wanted to display the cake on Shabbat at a Kiddush in shul. This worried me slightly, as Jerusalem is not known for its chilly Julys. Add to that the fact that the cake was to be transported to several different venues, and my usual composure abandoned me completely. I did not worry in vain. Disaster struck. It began with a few insignificant fissures but by Sunday afternoon, a full-blown landslide had taken place. Unable to withstand the heat after three days, the fondant covering the cake had basically just surrendered.

I rushed it back to the kitchen for reconstructive surgery. A few hours later it was (almost) as good as new! I was tempted to take a new set of photos and then place them side by side with the originals. It could have been like those games in children’s magazines where you have to spot the differences between two pictures. (e.g. The cake in the photo on the left has two flowers next to the silver sneakers and there are no flowers at all in the photo on the right!) But there was no time to spare and I made it back to the party just as the show began.

Phew.