There's No Me in Baking

For my daughter's 12th birthday, she had a cake-decorating contest with her friends. And it was my job to make the cakes. My sister told me to go to Publix and buy pre-made cakes, but I wouldn't listen. I thought, how hard is it to get a Betty Crocker Vanilla Cake box and mix it up in a pan?

Here's the story in pictures.

One box of Betty Crocker mix DOES NOT equal one 9 inch round pan.  The mix is supposed to be split into TWO PANS.  If you do not do this, you get a pudding mushroom.

If you attempt to remove the pudding mushroom from the pan, it will NOT miraculously become a round cake.  It will actually collapse upon itself and expire quietly.

It is very likely that while trying to resuscitate the pudding mushroom, you will forget it just came out of the oven. If this occurs, don't be alarmed if you sustain 3rd degree burns, scream obscenities in front of your dogs, lose control of the pan -- and your bowels -- and sacrifice one of your discontinued everyday plates to the kitchen floor.

But fear not, dear chickies.  I didn't get a Master's in Humanities for nothing. You CAN teach this old dog new tricks, and the second batch of cakes came out like this. 

And this is the final result.  Seven 12-year-old girls flexed their creative, crazy imaginations and put together some wonderful, albeit mostly inedible, works of art. 

So what does it all mean?  Well, for starters, I can't bake worth a crap.  But that's OK, because everything looks better with icing.  And makeup.  And red wine.  So, until next time, own your truth and keep on crowin' ........