Soon my son was turning 15 and since he went to Boston to celebrate, there wasn’t going to be much of a party. . . basically his favorite dinner with cake and ice cream. A few days before the big day, I saw some wonderful Nordicware “backyard bugs” cake pans in the discount store.  I looked them over.  No, he’s too old, I thought.

When I asked him what kind of cake he wanted, he said chocolate cake with chocolate icing. Then he hesitated and said, no, just plain cake. No icing. I thought of the bug mold and how good they might look unadorned with icing.

The day of his birthday, I raced back to the store hoping the pans would still be there. After all, it wasn’t that long since he’d asked me for a dinosaur cake. Here’s how they turned out. Chocolate cake from scratch. Yum. And when my son and his friends saw them, big smiles graced the faces of the tall and lanky, almost-grown 15-year-old kiddos.