More than a Cake

I grew up thinking birthday cakes were 9 x 13 rectangles with colored frosting, candles, and sprinkles if you were lucky. But Pinterest and grander things like Achenbach’s Bakery have changed my views. Birthday cakes are no longer relegated to frosted 9 x 13’s. Cakes are shapes with multiple colors of frosting and with fondant decorations.  

It was not his fault, then, that my son had bigger things on his mind than a rectangle left in its baking pan. I am not a cake decorator myself, a sad truth I proved on Tyler’s second birthday when I tried to create a 3D Jeep that ended up looking like it had suspension issues and a bad paint job. I may not be able to conquer frosting but Achenbach’s can. Their signature long-john cake has won my heart over completely. Best of all, Sugar Queens in their kitchen are masters of their craft and able to satisfy the whims of young customers.  

I didn’t know that at first and called them hesitantly. “My son wants a space shuttle on his birthday cake,” I said almost apologetically. “Any chance you can do that for him?”

The Sugar Queens didn’t flinch and my son was pleased to have his wish granted.

This year he wanted a helicopter cake. But with Achenbach’s literally thousands of miles away, the designer cake would be up to me. If I were good with frosting, I would bang one out without blinking. I’d probably make it 3D with windows on the sides, blinking lights on the front, and rotating blades on the top. But knowing my limitations, I looked online for simple instructions to guide me through cutting a cake into the shape of a helicopter. I was probably going to need to use pound cake or something with the consistency of a couch cushion to avoid excessive crumbling.

Just thinking about trying a sugary helicopter made me rue the day I turned down cake decorating classes advertised at Michael’s Arts and Crafts store when I was a teenager. And since I didn’t take them then, I wished cake decorating classes would have been a prerequisite for motherhood. Maybe federal laws could require them to be part of prenatal classes to save future generations of mothers the shame of not being able to make passable birthday cakes.

I showed Tyler a picture of a helicopter cake I thought I might be able to mimic. “No, not that,” he said immediately. I was way off track. “I want a red helicopter with a white cross on it and blue water and a man coming out of the helicopter on a rope to rescue someone in the water.” His sentence described a photograph in his favorite book on emergency vehicles.

A passable variation of that page might be feasible for the Sugar Queens at Achenbach’s, but it was well beyond my field of expertise. Or was it? I actually toyed with the idea of trying. How hard could it be to frost the bottom of a cake with blue, paint the top with a different shade, toss on a couple white clouds, then pipe on a helico. . . No. Definitely no. It wasn’t going to work. I started fishing for a compromise.

“What if we put a toy helicopter on the cake? Wouldn’t that be neat? We could put a little Lego man on the bottom to make it look like he’s getting rescued.”

His little nose wrinkled. “Nah. I was hoping the helicopter could be frosting. Plus, I don’t want to have to get frosting on a Lego man, and, anyway, we don’t have a coast guard helicopter.” 

He went back to his play and I went back to the kitchen realizing this whole deal was much bigger to me than birthday cakes. This was me being afraid of disappointing my son on his much-anticipated birthday. I didn’t want to see his expression when he saw a sub-par cake or have him bravely thank me for something I knew he didn’t like. Suddenly I wanted an easy out. I missed home. I missed Achenbach’s. I missed the independence of being able to drive to a store to pick up birthday party supplies like matching plates and napkins (items that would be missing at Tyler’s birthday party).

I knew I was being faced with life lessons far bigger than cakes. There were things I needed to embrace like allowing my son to learn to deal with disappointments. Or to help him begin to understand that having lowered expectations initially produce a happier and more satisfied ending. It will make him a better man someday if he learns these things well as a child.

The lessons weren’t just for him; they were for me. The mother in me wanted to give my son a party that met his (and my) expectations. But there was nothing to do except embrace reality and choose to make the most of our limited resources.

I sat beside him and said, “Tyler, your mommy isn’t a good cake decorator. Making pictures out of frosting is really hard and I can’t make nice ones. We’re going to have to come up with something easier for your cake than a helicopter rescue scene.”

I braced myself for the expected disappointment, but he barely flinched. “Okay. I’ll just be happy with any cake you make for me.” He smiled and scooched up against me as though to say he’d still love me in spite of my lack of skill.

Thus freed, I was back to the drawing board to decide on a cake within my limitations. My biggest problem with cakes is that I am no good with frosting. Somehow the consistency is always wrong. And then, even in my most careful moments, the frosting smears up everything in the general vicinity of the cake, piped lines look like partial curly-cues deviating off course, and afterwards the whole works ends up on my hips permanently. Frosting is my nemesis; there was no way I was going to be able to make a helicopter.

I looked through my cupboards for inspiration and found Bundt cake pan left behind by some other missionary mother. Ideas started rolling and I called Tyler over. “Look. We’ll bake your cake in this. Then I’ll print a picture of a helicopter and you can color it. We’ll put it on a stick and poke it into your cake. It will look like a helicopter is flying above the cake.”

He immediately agreed and wanted to start on his coloring project immediately.

Good things began happening in the kitchen. The cake came out of the Bundt pan in only two pieces –a pleasant surprise. Even the blue frosting was more cooperative than I dared to hope. I baked six cupcakes to make sure we had enough cake for the party and frosted them white. They almost looked like clouds.

Tyler was pleased. I was pleased, too, and not necessarily with the cake which would never be hailed as a masterpiece. But both my son and I had faced the challenge of disappointments and working with limited resources (he, his mother; me, the simplicity of Africa), and we came away happy.

The birthday party was a success.