birthday post two: practice cake

 

Maya's birth-twin's mother (Stefanie, you know, my former doctor, whose son Carson was born three hours after Maya just down the hospital hall) suggested I add-on to this cake decorating class Community Ed. was putting on, so I scrambled at the chance--two evenings! out! with a girlfriend! making stuff uninterrupted!--and began to hate the smell of Crisco-based icing.  Wah. 

And then made a bazillion bright-pink roses.  And wondered what on earth had gotten into me.

 

They're rehearsal cakes for our kiddos' birthdays.  Mine:  used store-bought icing because I was too exhausted to make it from scratch (promising to do so with the "real" cake); swore as it slid into the glass cake stand topper as I drove to the high school and smeared icing all over the sides (whoops); laughed instead of swore when the cold Minnesota winds swept many neon-roses off my cookie sheet and into the fields--be free, little roses, be free and send some tiny woodland creature into sugar shock!

What else does one do with a bazillion bright roses and ten days before Christmas and no desire to make room to freeze the dang thing?  Why, a Gertrude Stein cake, of course.  A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.  There.  This made me feel immensely better.  I may have the handwriting of an elementary student when it comes to cakes and the frosting skills of a pre-schooler, but at least I have the cheekiness of a graduate student.

We've been slowly hacking away at the cake.  Maya even tasted some frosting.  Before her first birthday.  I'm uncertain as to what I want to do for her actual birthday-cake, but I'm mulling.  And attempting to un-sugar-shock myself.  Twitch.  Twitch.