The Silent

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If people know that you’re into presidents, that it is your thing, you get to hear a lot of people tell you their favorite presidential anecdotes. One of the stories I hear most often is the one about a woman betting that she could get Calvin Coolidge to say more than two words to her. According to the story, she approaches Coolidge and tells him about the bet. His response: “You lose.”

You might also hear that Calvin Coolidge was the one U. S. President to be born on Independence Day. 

Someone who really wants to give you a run for your money when it comes to presidential trivia might ask you if you knew that he was sworn into office by his own father who was a justice of the peace.

Oh, and he was a redhead. Like Jefferson, Jackson, and Van Buren before him and Kennedy after him.

When I think of Calvin Coolidge, however,  I like to think about his fake family tree. Don’t even bother Googling that, it’s something that exists only in my mind.

I like to think of Calvin Coolidge as  Barack Obama’s great-grandfather. You see, Calvin Coolidge worked the radio and the power of photography.  He took full advantage of any opportunity to be photographed. Coolidge’s son would be JFK who, in my opinion, brought a certain type of celebrity to the presidency. Hmm, on that note, though, maybe Theodore Roosevelt is on this family tree somewhere. Maybe Andrew Jackson?  Ronald Reagan comes next in this imagined direct line, the actual celebrity elected to the nation’s highest office. Reagan understood how to work the camera, after all, he was an actor. Finally comes Barack Obama who, taking after the other men in his fake family tree, knew how to take advantage of the technology of the time, demonstrating this with his Internet campaign for the presidency.

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The cake:

Coolidge has been photographed in cowboy attire, as a farmer, and wearing a Sioux headdress. With this in mind, it seems like his cupcake should be ornamental. So, the frosting  design on these cupcakes are all a bit different. The cupcake itself is carrot flavored. It isn’t a carrot cake cupcake, instead, the carrot flavor comes from carrot juice. The cupcake also has a strawberry jam filling. The frosting is coconut-flavored buttercream.

I think that I could only detect the carrot in the cupcake because I knew that it was there. If I did this one again, I might add carrot puree to bump up the carrot flavor. This one is close, but with a tweak or two, I think it could be better.

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