Flashback Friday – The Icing on the Cake

My daughter turns three tomorrow, so I’m spending today doing the cake and getting things ready.  Thought I might flashback to this article I wrote in 2008 after her second birthday party.

Before becoming a mother I spent many years as a teacher. I planned excursions and celebrations and full scale musical productions. So I had no qualms about planning a little party for a two year old.

I was quite pleased with my preparations. Low stress venue? Check. Age appropriate games? Check. Healthy but appetising morning tea? Check. Party bags that parents would be as pleased to receive as their children? Check. The only thing I was slightly concerned about was the cake.

When I was growing up my mother had one of those Women’s Weekly cake books that everyone’s mum seemed to have. For a good two weeks leading up to a birthday my sister and I would pore over every picture as we tried to decide which cake would become the celebration’s centrepiece. A marshmallow Dolly Varden cake? Or a maypole cake with colourful ribbons and miniature dancing girls?

With such fond childhood memories I looked forward to preparing a gorgeous butterfly cake for my own daughter’s birthday. That is, until the day before the party, when the realisation actually hit me. I think I had mistakenly come to the conclusion that cake decorating was a skill you automatically received during childbirth! You know, just one of those “mum things” that every mother is inherently capable of.

I was starting to panic just a little when my sister rang to see how the party preparations were going. I told her nonchalantly that I only had the cake left to organise. My sister, who is far more competent in the kitchen than I am, cut straight through my pretence with a simple question. “What kind of icing are you using?” she asked. “You mean there’s more than one kind?!” I asked in return. As she laughed I said that sentence that I should say more often, even if it makes me cringe. “I think I need some help.”

My sister came over with creative ideas and beautiful cookbooks. (I noticed none of her books had bent pages or spilt ingredients on them but she doesn’t have children – yet.) Together we decided on a simple design, a basic icing, and a decorating plan of attack. Then she left me to it.

Flitter Flutter

That cake was a labour of love for me. And it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. It took pride of place in the middle of the table, but in all honesty it wasn’t the centrepiece of the celebration. My daughter was. She looked like a little fairy princess, and her smile told me that she felt like one too. I realised almost too late that she wasn’t impressed by my organisational skills or culinary efforts. She was just so happy to be with her little friends, to have two candles to blow out, and to have her mummy fluttering around in a pair of wings just like her! Everything else was just, well, icing on the cake…