The cake is important.
The first three themed cakes I made for my offspring, however, were as far from a magnum opus as the crayon scrawl under the dining room table (yes kids, I actually am aware that one, or both, of you has been terribly creative under there!) is from hanging in the Tate Museum.
The first of these monumental failures was a 5 layer jelly something or other. The second cake was supposed to be bubbles. And maybe, on an abstract kind of level, they did look like bubbles. But do you even know how hard it is too make a cake look like bubbles? Try it. I dare you! By the third cake, I was starting to get into the gear of great self-caking. (That's somewhere before Home Industry Acquisition, but well after Kitchen's Wrecked; Let's Move House). The third creation was a fairy mushroom. With fairies on it. The fairies were Home Industry Acquisitions. I could see it was a mushroom, of course, but after I had received the few quizzical glances from the gathered guests, and had to explain that, actually, under this enormous dome of a cake, there is a rather thin and spindly mushroom stalk holding it all up in the air, I realized that my caking abilities were desperately lacking. That's when the sister-in-law became remarkably employable. And since then the cakes have been a pleasure (not always to make, but to serve - always!)
Which brings me to the point of my story - how hard it was for me, yesterday, to let go and let my children "do" the cake. The children competed in a cake-decorating competition which I found highly stressful (shut it, Control Freak!), but they enjoyed immensely. And they even won a prize for... oh boy... the most Cavity Causing Cake... ouch... talk about putting me in my place!
So much for always getting it right, right?
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