Friday, August 26, 2011

Big promises to little people

I have learnt a valuable lesson. Do not make promises to your kids in the spur of the moment.

For example: About a month ago, one of the kids at Lyla's daycare celebrated their birthday party by bringing a Kung Fu Panda cake to share. Lyla raved about the cake and then she said "Mummy, when it's my birthday, will you come to my school and have some of my Percy cake?"

Your wada what?

With a big fake smile on, I asked "Who is Percy?". It turns out that Percy the small engine is one of Thomas the Tank Engine's mates. Oh ok then, I thought. How hard can it be to make a Percy cake? That was my first mistake.

So against all my natural inclinations, I tried to be organised about it. First step, Googling this Percy person to see what he looks like. Second step, find a good cake recipe. Thankfully, I "knew" (stalked) a Domestic Goddess over at Sleepless in Samoa, and she gave me her secret ingredient chocolate cake recipe, and it was very good.

Before I could tackle step three, which was practising the decoration side of things, I lost my mojo. And next thing you know, it was the Thursday night before "Percy cake day". I hit the Panic/Turbo button and somehow from somewhere amongst the failed batches of buttercream, self taught piping "skills" and "all those baking spillages" (as my wise husband put it - wise by completely avoiding having anything to do with this Mission Impossible), I managed to produce this result:


Ta dah!
Chocolate cake, with base Betty Crocker choc frosting,
and topped with piped buttercream "graphics"

And even though the cake was finished and I was exhausted, I couldn't even sleep properly because I was so worried of how Lyla the Perfectionist Monkey Queen would critique my cake.

No more promises from this big person to a certain little person.

5 comments:

Coconut Girl said...

That's such an AWESOME looking cake! Looks delicious! I can't imagine making a cake like that...I suck at anything remotely artsy. That's what Terri's Cakes are for lol. Bet Lyla loved it...and bet she's thinking what a COOL mum she has :)

Lani Wendt Young said...

Ohmigosh - you actually PIPED your icing graphics!? Im in awe. I would have totally cheated and bought a Percy train toy and stuck it on the top. Or got a paper plate with Percy on it and put it on there...cos Im a lazy loser mum like that! LOL You rock.
And yes, never ever make the mistake of making promises to those little darlings. They will haunt you forever if you cant keep the promise. Isnt it funny how kids can always remember the annoying things like promises you make them? (But they cant remember stuff like...what chore you told them to do two minutes ago?)

Teine Samoa said...

I just want to add that this is totally amazing! And that I would totally have gone with the Percy train toy too!

Sina Tupou said...

Thanks, blog mums.

CG - I did consider getting one from a cake shop, for all of one second when I remembered how much it would cost me, coz I'm cheap like that. Haha.

Lani - yea, I piped them. For her first birthday, I had thought "Fondant, that will be easy enough to do". Wrong. So this time round I thought, piping buttercream...quick and easy. Wrong again. Big respect to cake decorators!

TS - Thanks. I was presented with the option of putting a Percy toy on top, but the thought of my OCD girl bursting into tears at the sight of a toy train getting chocolate crumbs and frosting all over it...would have created a "bad mother" scene at daycare. Lol!

Note to self: Start saving now for next year's cake, and order it from a cake shop.

kuaback said...

probs for you and your artsy fartsy skills..hehe

so I'm still waiting for the recipe you were going to send me when Sleepless approves of course..Coz i want to be all domestic goddess next month and make Master T's cake myself instead of TEd's Bakery..lol..