My daughter had a great idea: she wanted to start a book club! She decided the first book would be Junie B. Jones, 1st Grader: Aloha-ha-ha, perfect book to read the summer before heading into 1st grade.
I printed a list of discussion questions, planned on rainbow kebabs and Hawaiian-themed crafts, and at the center of the shindig… there would be a cake. A glorious volcano cake. How difficult could that be? I’d simply use the Wonder Mold we already owned— you know, the one you use to make the dress and stick the doll torso in the top? Only we’d stick sparklers in the top, frost it with chocolate, get some molten lava flowing down its sides and boom, done.
Right?
I’ve never been great at cakes. OK, I fail every time. Lack of patience and easily flustered. For Big’s 4th superhero birthday I made a Wonder Woman cake. This was pre-blogging days so, sorry friends, no pics. I had to use a Disney princess pan because they don’t make Wonder Woman pans anymore and I wasn’t about to spend $50 for a vintage one on ebay. Thirty hungry bat/spider/super children waited impatiently while I hastily juggled decorating tips and sticky bags to paint an image of a female superhero from distant memory.
I knew it was bad when I looked down at my creation and saw a face completely unrecognizable. Not that you couldn’t tell WHO it was, you couldn’t even tell that it was a face at all.
My best friend nailed it when she said: “Oh my God. She looks like a burn victim!”
Here I was, a few years later, attempting to make the centerpiece of my daughter’s event in a medium I knew better than to visit again. But when you’re a parent you must trudge forward despite your weaknesses and remind yourself that you make up for them in other areas.
The fact that this volcano cake so closely resembled a VAGINA, and with each slice became even more EMPHATICALLY VAGINAL, proves it’s my biggest cake fail to date. My child wanted to start a book club. A book club for Pete’s sake. How lucky am I? And this is how I help her out?
But the kids didn’t notice. They never notice. And the most important thing was, the cake was absolutely, 100 % delicious. So the fact that something like this got past the kids, when mommy is usually so adamant about no potty humor at the table, well, folks, maybe this fail is really a win.
May we turn all our fails into wins. Today and forever.
