I started making my kids’ birthday cakes after the local bakery botched my child’s first cake.  I had requested a tractor cake and placed the order at least a week beforehand.  They called me the morning of the party to inform me that they did not have the adorable tractor accessories and what should they do?

In typical stressed out “Mommy’s first birthday party” fashion, I told them to just make me a tractor cake.  Somehow.

Don’t get me wrong, it was cute.  They did a super job.  It was just that part of me said “why couldn’t I have done that myself?”

And the monster was created.

I believed in great use of props for the first few years.  A wooden Harold the Helicopter perched on one cake.  Little dump trucks filled with Nerds and mini M&Ms drove on brown sugar dirt paths for others.  I even enlisted my husband to build a model Edmund Fitzgerald when Tater went through his shipwreck phase.

My cakes would never be mistaken for professionally decorated masterpieces.

It just seems the kids know I really love them when I am mixing up various bowls of frosting and quietly swearing to myself in the kitchen.  They sneak in to snatch frosting bits and lick spoons.  Sometimes the surprise toys went on last, and that only made them more desperate to see their cake!

As I stand there with food coloring stained fingers and frosting covering every surface from the sink to the stove, I always ask myself why the heck I do this.  Why not just buy the darn cake?  The kids barely even touch the cake.  They eat the frosting, play with the toys, and move on to wreak sugar fueled havoc for a few hours.  I am left with piles of cake to be thrust upon unwilling family members and slightly more willing coworkers.  Let’s not forget the dirty bowls and cake decorating tools!

I do it because I am thrifty.  Because I love my kids.  Because they love my cakes, even if the licensed characters end up resembling the cake version of prison tattoos.  I mean sure, it kind of looks like the Tasmanian Devil, but you know it wasn’t done by a professional.  My kids don’t care if BOB (Monsters v. Aliens) or Blue look slightly off.  They are still at that cute age where they draw people with giant hands and stick legs.  They aren’t judging the cake nearly as harshly as I am.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go scrape some frosting off the counter and see if I can get my hands to look a little less Smurf-ish.

But for fun, I will connect you with this link, which assures me that I am not alone in my quest to bake that damn cake myself.

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

Finally, here is my latest masterpiece.  With any luck, you won’t find it on the Cake Wreck site in a week or two!

Blue looks a bit more menacing than I intended!