birthday cake

do you see that cake in the picture?
not only is it absolutely adorable, it tastes amazing too.
This mom reminds me every year (on each of her children's birthdays) just how untalented I am. :)
She has no idea how wonderful her creations are, it's just something she likes to do, she says. A note: the reason I feel so inept each time I see one of these cakes, years and years ago I went down the cake decoration road, after a couple of years of no sleep for days before each birthday, late night frosting and more frosting, and even more frosting disasters Beckie said to me one day before her 6th birthday, when I had asked the inevitable question of what would you like you cake to look like? Beckie replied with,
did you know you can get cakes at the bakery?" Her friend had had one at her birthday party a few weeks earlier. "mom it tastes really good" she said. That was all it took, I picked up the phone and made the call and life has certainly been simpler since. I quickly realized that there had been no joy in my attempts at creating the perfect birthday cake, just stress and fear. Fear that the darn thing would fall apart before the requisite picture of birthday child grinning over birthday cake, or fear that someone would quite simply go into shock after one bite of the sugary confection. When it wasn't working the way I envisioned I just used more frosting. Immediate medical attention was always a part of each and every bite. Of course there was always the wondering if I would simply survive the cake making drama each birthday created, me reduced to babbling in the corner was always just a frosting swipe away. So back to this mom and her amazing cakes, the first time she arrived with a decorated masterpiece, I wanted to hate her, after all it was amazing. Then I took a bite, and seriously tried to not like her but I couldn't because I recalled all to well just how much I had hated the process of creating each cake. When you do not have the talent, sometimes it doesn't matter how much you practice, you quite simply are never going to have it. Which is ok, I am very talented at ordering the most amazing cakes from other people. This way everyone is happy, and twice a year one of these amazingly decorated, and wonderfully delicious pieces of art arrive with two of my daycare kids.