My experiments in cake decorating

So yesterday for the Sprogling's birthday, I got a crazy idea. Instead of buying him a cake from the grocery store, I was going to make him one!

What a fantastic idea! The two year old would surely appreciate the time and effort going into his cake. Suuuuure.

But anyways I went ahead and bought things to accomplish this. My mother had picked up a cake tin in the shape of that really popular car that Disney is pushing right now. I pulled that out, read the oh so helpful instructions on decorating the end cake and went out bought the icing tips I would need, as well as super fancy food dye.

Get it all home and bake the cake. It works out well. Chocolate because the Sprogling doesn't have an opinion on flavours yet and I like chocolate.

I let that cool down and make the icing. I follow the darn instructions down to sifting the stupid icing sugar one cup at a time and I used my super duper fancy mixer. I get watery (tasty!) icing. Nothing that is going to let me decorate the cake.

This is about 4:30. Dinner is due at 5:30.

I make an emergency call to the Hubs to run and grab premade icing on his way home from work, pretty please or I swear I'm going to have a meltdown, OK!

He comes home at 4:45 with 4 extra big tins of icing and a big hug for me. Crisis averted.

I mix up the icing with the colours. Oh the colours. Did I mention that they stain? Everything? My hands still look like I may have been slaughtering small animals behind my house yesterday just for laughs, but that's beside the point.

I start icing, and I'm actually doing well! I have never in my life iced a cake any fancier than slopping on as much icing as possible and smoothing it out with a knife. Or writing "Happy Birthday XXX" on it with those gel type icing tubes.

I manage to get through the whole entire cake down to the part where I put the numbers on the side of the car. This is the very last step. My husband comes in and tells my I'm doing really well. I turn to smile at him and give him a quick kiss and manage to slop the icing down where I was about to meticulously place it in the lines of the numbers. I try to make it look as good as possible and then give up.

The Sprogling's two. As long as the icing is made with sugar and not spinach he doesn't care at all. He will not care if you cannot read the numbers. And oh yah, he can't read.

He had two helpings and got to eat with his hands. The cake was a success.