These last two weeks I’ve been busy with a project I’ve been putting off for three years, which is part of the reason I haven’t been writing. I’ve been downloading pictures from my camera cards—all 600 of them—pictures that is. Another casualty of writing full-time.
It all started with my daughter’s 10th birthday. Her birthday was a formal princess/tiara/fancy updos, the whole shebang. Naturally parents want pictures and naturally I promised I would take them. So one thing led to another and I began the selection process, which led to setting up an online Walgreens photo account, which led to my discovering themed borders available, which led to hours upon hours, upon days and now weeks of this photo project. I’m still working on the cropping, rotating, red eye, and I’m actually leading up to the point of this post. I can’t bake a pretty cake to save my life.
First off, I hate to cook. The closest thing to cooking I marginally enjoy is baking: cakes and cookies in particular. But I AM NOT GOOD AT IT.
Exhibit A: This cake we call the Butt Cake for obvious reasons. 
You can see I tried to repair its implosion with skewers. As you can see, it was not effective. This was my sister’s birthday cake and as I was contemplating running to the store before she got there, she arrived, thus the body language of embarrassment I portray. (No, I didn’t crop my head off to remain mysterious. Most pictures I’ve seen so far of me are of my backside or headless. When I find a suitable photo, I will change my avatar.)
This is what the cake looked like the next year. I went out and bought it. 
Exhibit B: My daughter’s birthday cake we call the Insect Cake for obvious reasons. 
Don’t worry, this cake was for family eyes only. It was the product of too much batter left over from making cupcakes for her classroom in her birthday honor. I had enough batter to make one layer of a layer cake, and that with the extra cupcakes, I created something frightful and buggy eyed.
Exhibit C: It’s now my husband’s turn for cake disgrace. My being astute to my past failures led me to stay away from making a cake this time. So I made him a cheesecake.
But something bad happened. (What? You’re shocked, you say?)
I was heading over to the stove with the crust, ready to pour the batter in it and bake, and lo-and-behold the crust flew out of the tin and landed right on top of the batter and crumbled into pieces. We call this one Cheesecake Crumble Surprise.
This is why I stick to writing for my creative outlet.
I am not the only person frustrated about their foodie failures. This last photo is of my sister. She spent the better part of the day churning ice cream to feed eleven people. Her hard-worked efforts produced enough ice cream to fill a Baskin Robbin kiddie cup. As you can see, she is disappointed.
These are just a few of my kitchen failures. None of the others was captured on film—thank God. I have a reputation. Family members expect me to deliver the same results each time. They put in their orders months ahead of time. It’s tough living up to these expectations.
Is there a bit of you that is so bad you could have a cult following, a B movie made in honor of it?
Tricia
Tricia, I love that you had the nerve to take pictures! And post them…
OKay I’ll make my confession right here…. ! tried card making once with a friend. She thought it would be a nice thing for us to do.. She makes cards..I write…
I’m not exaggerating when I say the card I made looked like something a five year old would make..My daughter wanted me to scan it and send it to her so that she could enjoy a good laugh…I’m not crazy. I wasn’t going to have that sent half way around the world.
My friend and I still laugh about it.. It was horrible.
Laura, it was a wise move not to scan that card. That’s how cult followings get started. Soon, everyone would want one, me included, and you would be pressured to create a disaster every time. Who needs that kind of stress?
Thank you for your confession.
I bake two things – chocolate chip cookies and cheesecake, and I’m really good at them. Superhero good. They are the only two things I can make in the kitchen. Also, I’m really horrible at taking pictures. I’m always taking this picture where I have to point just outside the border and say, “My child is right about here. I thought I had him in the view finder, but…”
Judy, I would love to taste something that is Superhero good.
Though, I am a cake failure, I make a good whole wheat, wheat germ, chocolate chip, macadamia nut cookie. Almost Superhero good.
I used to bake quite a bit and my DH offered the ultimate praise: “…just like my mother used to make.” Passing years, a home business, and serious writing took me out of the kitchen to the point that now he’s happy if he gets the occasional batch of cookies. I don’t usually have many cooking failures. My downfall is procrastination. If you want to see a disaster just peek into my office. One whole wall is stacked with boxes of photos waiting to be organized in albums. Not a big deal, you say? Maybe it wouldn’t be… if the stacks hadn’t sat there untouched for a decade!
Carol, I know a lot about procrastination. A much subtler message in this post was the fact that I’m three years behind in even having pictures that I can stack in boxes waiting for a fairy to place them in photo albums.
This touches upon a worse, much worse “B” movie called Scrapbooking. My daughter received many such a time sucker for her birthday and has asked for my assistance. With my aid, we created just a photo album. White pages with pictures glued to them. That’ll teach her for asking for my creative genius so soon after witnessing the Insect Cake.
Oh, Carol, I sympathize. Procrastination is my biggest fault too. I have far more plans than I’ll ever have time to execute … and yet, I keep planning more things! Meanwhile, all my good intentions …
Yes, Linda, you could call it the Bucket List of Things I’ll Never Do.
I’m pretty darn sure my Not Do list would see more cross outs than my To Do list. Like the three thousand short stories in my head I’ll write someday.
Tricia, somehow you always ask questions that have me thinking for days!
By the way, I love the pics you posted! I was so impressed with the second one until I read it was bought.
My husband’s birthday cake was ruined a few years in a row after we were married. Dropped. Sat on. That kind of thing. And one year my sister used salt instead of sugar. Oh, and did I mention my parents were health nuts, and the only kind of cake they made was with tofu?!
Jennifer, health nuts, you say?
My dad is as bad as they come. I suffered through many a tofu concoctions in my day. Once he made me and my friends a shake. He blended soft tofu, dates, almond butter, bananas, blueberries, wheat germ oil, flax seed with powdered milk and water.
I didn’t have very many friends.
yes! In my face family it was kasha and bowties when the friends came for dinner lol
The butt cake and the insect cake, ha! I think it takes talent to have that kind of consistency, Tricia!
I kinda thought so, too, Candice. Thanks for recognizing my great talents. 🙂
Oh, my! Those cakes are hilarious! As I tell my husband or children when I have disasters, “We can’t be perfect at everything!” In other words, I might be good at writing, but that’s it! 🙂
Agreed. I think striving for perfection in any area other than writing would, in fact, hinder the creative process. We should, therefore, spare the cooking, spoil the writing. Spoil to perfection.
Tricia, this is hilarious. I was lol at the cheesecake crumble. Thank you for sharing!
Cynthia,
I actually folded in the crust and baked it. Shameless, I know, but it was very good.
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