09 Apr 2013

Birthday cakes, flawed yet perfect

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Stress relief & sleep support

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Staring down at my latest, less than perfect, homemade birthday cake attempt – a two tier vanilla polka dot sponge cake, I pondered a question. Kid’s birthday cakes are a big deal for most children and by default (or not) parents, but are they worth ruining a day over?

Perhaps I should have learnt a lesson from a few months earlier when I had a go at making a Spiderman cake - complete with crazy fondant icing. Recreating an edible superhero that looks the part and feeds 30 kids is no mean feat! It took 12 hours over three days to finish and, after a few tears and a whole lot of (self-inflicted) stress, the end result was a cake that tasted great but sported a lot more, um, “character” than I would have liked.

There was also my very first attempt. A simple chocolate number one cake that I somehow managed to ice back to front so, rather than looking like it stepped out from a page of The Woman’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book, it looked phallic. Fabulous.

Despite the epic failures, I keep coming back for more. Is this a competitive thing? I have a few friends that make the most exquisite baked creations for their children yet keeping up with them is not where this need to try to make, rather than buy, birthday cakes comes from.

Sure there is some parental pride at stake but it’s not an ego thing. The reason why I keep attempting homemade birthday cakes is (as corny as it sounds) that I want my kids to feel proud of me for trying. I’m also sentimental about it. I want my children to look back and smile at photos of themselves with these cakes – creations that may be flawed but are not short on love or effort. And do you know what else? One day I might just nail a cake and when I do it will be a pretty, excuse the pun, sweet moment. For me, that’s enough reason to keep going - for now at least.

Have you had any kid’s birthday cake disasters? What’s your take on homemade versus bought?

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