Let them eat cake

Years ago ... but not so long ago that the kids can't remember, I attempted to make Jeff a birthday cake. The kids still bring up that fiasco "remember the time you made Dad a 'pancake' cake for his birthday?" - for what ever reason the cake did not rise and the two cake rounds did in fact look like huge pancakes. Followed closely after this was Wrenn's 2nd birthday where I tried to make her a cake for her 2nd birthday party ... Jeff ran out an hour before the party to GW Marketplace in Norfolk and bought a ready made cake, the home made version did not pass muster ... pretty sad when you think about that, what cake can't pass for a bunch of 2 year olds? I think it was shortly after these 2 failed attempts that I suggested to him that perhaps I needed some professional help - Wine and Cake in Norfolk was offering cake decorating classes (and surely I would learn how to make a cake at the same time?). He was all for me signing up for the class. I coerced my good friend Shawn and we were off and running to Cake Decorating 101. I graduated - even have a certificate to prove that I can in fact decorate a cake and even went on to take the second class (tiers - as in wedding cake tiers) and a speciality class in rolled Fondant.

It's been 10 years since that time and I realized today that my stint of being the resident cake decorator is now on the down side. Mitchell and Walker turned 15 today and I will only have 3 more years of making them their requested cakes before they bolt for bigger and better venues. It is a labor of love for me - I would never make any money as a cake decorator because I am painfully slow, but it does give me a lot of joy to create something that looks fun and at the same time is good to eat (maybe just a wee bit too good). I've always made the boys their own cake - I mean on the one day of the year that's supposed to be your special day would you really want to share your cake with someone else, even if that person had been with you in-utero?

This year I had to regroup, as my favorite shop in Norfolk for cake decorating supplies (including awesome already made frosting sold by the 5 lb or 10 lb containers) is half a world away. Cool non-pariels and anything and everything you can think of to put on the cake was no longer only a 15 minute drive from my house. And the boys are older, not like they're going to give me much help ... "this year I want a Harry Potter theme" - I was on my own. So I scoured the commissary looking for ideas and a few did jump out at me - the kids love these Japanese mushroom cookies and the Pocky's (chocolate covered pretzel-like sticks) and I could buy fruit roll ups and surely come up with something to do with them.

I set off for home and the day long extravaganza in my kitchen (can I whine again on how much I miss my convection oven? ... electric ovens just don't cut it once you've experienced convection). Never sure where my creations will lead I just jump in and hope something will come to me. The kids never complain (well one year Wrenn did swipe away half of my carefully laid out lettering because she said it looked weird, I personally thought it looked typographically artistic but graduating from RISD what else would I think? ... I believe I poured myself are REALLY LARGE glass of wine at that point) so I guess I've had more hits than misses.

So this time around, as I finished up I hoped the boys would be pleased ... mushrooms, Pockys, fruit roll ups - who would have thought? Necessity is yet again the mother of invention. Inspiring.