Saturday, December 22, 2012

I've lost my mojo.

Lately it seems that I've lost my cake-decorating "mojo."  

Not that I really believe in mojo.   It's just that...I used to be better at this stuff.   And lately - well, not so much.

Here is the cake a made last week for my son's Lego birthday celebration.  I thought, "A Lego brick, how hard can that be?"  I was really disappointed with it.  


Here is my daughter's first birthday cake (2011).  I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

And Curious George was decent.  Except for eyes.  I think his eyes were a little creepy.


As I look back, I think the Spider-Man cake in 2008 was where it all started going downhill.  (Perhaps not coincidentally, it was the first birthday after we had our big food revolution, and after we began trying to avoid artificial food dyes.  This poses a huge challenge.)


Here's the cake of which I was perhaps the most proud: a treasure chest for my son's pirate party (2009). Happy, it's easy to make a healthy brown frosting.


Lightning McQueen was a fun challenge, although the red was next to impossible. This was pre-food revolution.


And my first major foray into the world of cake decoration: Larry the Cucumber.  Can you believe his eyes were made entirely of frosting?!


There have undeniably been some hits and misses.   Some cakes, I loved how they turned out.  Others I was rather ashamed.


There's no doubt about it; I used to be able to pull this stuff off well.  But somehow, somewhere I lost that ability.  

The silver lining?  The cakes still taste great, and it's such a relief to know I can make them with nourishing ingredients...even grain-free if I need to.   So anyway, there's that...

2 comments:

Jill Foley said...

How many times have I said that you remind me of my sister in law? She just posted about her cake for her 4th son's 1st birthday. It was cute, but not nearly as cute as her past cakes have been - she blames it on the lack of sleep due to having 4 boys. : )

Syd wants a Lego cake, but I'm thinking of just using legos to decorate it.

Actually, our tradition is that we let the girls decorate their own cake (with help from us), but it takes the pressure of me to produce a great cake! It doesn't make for great photos, but it does make for great memories.

Ami said...

Yeah, the healthier component is huge. :) Also? You've got more kids now... I have noticed the same thing in terms of my cake "decorating," and I'm only at 3 kids. In fact, this past September, after paying a friend to make the amazing Very Hungry Caterpillar cake for my youngest in August, I made cupcakes for the oldest's birthday. With simple white icing that I "piped" on in a random zigzag pattern. Meh, it tasted good, and the kids have always been happy. That's more important than looks. :)