Birthday Cake Fail
My little now-3 year old requested a pink cake for her birthday. No sweat. I can do that.
Sunday night I went to pump it out, as I wanted to get ‘er done quickly while the kids were in bed.
Cake mix: check. Powdered sugar for frosting: nope. Since I wanted it done then, while the cake baked I pulled out the blender and powdered my sugar. (cue "Little House on the Prairie" music)
Clock ticking
After whipping the butter I added the sugar and... watched as my butter totally melted and got all greasy.
Duh.
That's what happens when you add hot sugar from the blender to butter.
But I powered through. And I'm not joking when I tell you that it got worse from there. The whole cake-making process was a disaster. And it freaking took FOREVER.
You'd think I'd call it and just pick up some cupcakes or something but I was going to finish this thing. And boy, did I ever.
So here's the Pinterest-Fail finished project:
Every time I look at it I just laugh out loud. It is totally a Charlie Brown Cake.
But this is the point of this post, because here's what I'm posting on Instagram:
This actually looks pretty cool, minus the holes in between the flowers that are there because I knew I didn't have enough frosting. Thank heavens for Photoshop and cropping.
From this pic, no one has any idea that the cake is so seriously lopsided that after I cut some pieces it fell over. For real. Or that the sides are so crusty from where the flowers didn't work and I didn't have enough frosting to fix it and I wasn't ABOUT to blend more powdered sugar so I could then make more frosting.
All they can see are those cool flowers (made with a Russian piping tip, btw. Those tips are amazing.)
What I'm saying is, let's all cut ourselves some slack. This right here is life. It's both ugly and beautiful.
As we look around and see the best from others it can be easy to compare ourselves and make all sorts of judgments about ourselves and them. But we never know the whole story.
We're all just doing the best we can and sometimes we fail. But really, it's perspective, right?
We all have Things. And that's ok. That's why we're running around on our hamster wheels here on earth, to try to work through our Things and learn to live happily.
This is all easy to say and hard to do.
But you know what? The 3 year old thought it was the most beautiful pink cake ever.
