Every guest at the grand celebration on March 4, 2023 of the 80th birthday of the Nigerian teacher, author, journalist, unstoppable intellectual, creative personality and retired professor of English, the amazing Lolo Dorothy Chinaka Akujuo, will have the opportunity to munch a piece of a special Red Velvet cake.
The choice of a Red Velvet cake as the cake of the grand birthday event was made jointly by the evergreen lady herself and her last son, Chidiegwu who is an Account Executive at Amazon Web Services in New York City. A master chef at Leonardo’s Palazzo, the choice venue located on the North Shore of Long Island, New York City, which will play host to the event, is set to bake the cake with very special ingredients.
The big birthday banquet to celebrate the amazing lady who retired from the City University of New York, will also feature the international Premiere of the epic movie, “My Birthright”, a story of the big clash of traditional Igbo culture faced with emerging European values in the 1960s. This story told by the amazing Lolo Dorothy Akujuo, has been shot in living colour by a new wiz boy of Nigerian movie making, Damola Akapo. Guests at the grand birthday event will have the privilege of being the first to watch “My Birthright” which will be shown on the big screen, for the first time, on March 4 at Leonardo’s Palazzo.
The event is also expected to bring the cream of Nollywood to New York for the International Premiere of “My Birthright”. Among those expected at Leonardo’s Palazzo are two of the best-known divas in the history of the Silver Screen in Nigeria, Stella Damasus who will arrive from Atlanta and Regina Askia-Williams, an actress of very high repute and a former “Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria” who comes in from New Jersey.
Akujuo
Ace broadcaster, actor and film producer, Mr. Patrick Harry Doyle, who is the Supervising Producer of “My Birthright”, is expected to arrive New York from Lagos for the Birthday event and international premier.
An all gloss super embossed magazine, “80 YEARS YOUNG!”, chronicling the life and times of the amazing Lolo Dorothy Akujuo , with stories told by the evergreen lady herself, her husband, children, siblings, friends, colleagues, church members, etc., is being published simultaneously in Lagos and New York. “80 YEARS YOUNG!” is edited by her younger brother, Chief Tony Okoroji, the master of unforgettable events, former president of PMAN and Chairman of COSON who runs TOPS, the Lagos based entertainment and publishing outfit. The magazine is laced with iconic photographs of the very eventful life of the amazing Lolo Dorothy Akujuo.
As March 4 draws near, friends, family and colleagues of Lolo Dorothy Akujuo, are dry-cleaning their favorite outfits or getting new ones ready to walk the red carpet in style and take sensational photographs at Leonardo’s Palazzo.
An expected highlight of the show will be a big live performance of AJ Warrior, the look-alike son of the great Sir (Dr) Warrior Obinna, the treasured Igbo philosopher singer of the Oriental Brothers fame, who with his many memorable songs lifted the spirits of millions of Igbo people after the Nigeria/ Biafra War.
Ajuzieogu Obinna, better known as AJ Warrior, whose talent replicates that of his father, Dr (Sir) Warrior who passed on in 1999, has again raised his hand and promised that the show in New York will be “gbamistic” and that the guests will rock like never before to the original and unadulterated Igbo Highlife Music of the musical prophet, Sir Warrior.
The Red velvet cake which is the cake of the event and its original recipe are known in the United States to come from New York City’s famous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The cake has been dubbed the confection Waldorf-Astoria cake. Traditionally, a red velvet cake is iced with a French-style butter ermine icing, also called roux icing. While containing butter and flour, it is not made from a roux which is very light and fluffy and time-consuming to prepare. Cream cheese frosting and buttercream frosting are variations that have increased its popularity.
In recent years, the red velvet cake and red velvet cupcakes have become increasingly popular in the US and many European countries, especially around Christmas and more recently Valentine’s Day. A resurgence in the popularity of this cake is attributed by some to the 1989 film, Steel Magnolias, which included a red velvet groom’s cake made in the shape of an armadillo.
