my desire to bake began when i was just a little girl.

i was beside myself with joy when santa brought me an easy bake oven on my 6th christmas.

i imagined myself cranking out pies and cookies and cakes and cupcakes.

and making my first fortune.

i’d set up my bakery along with my lemonade stand.

and people would flock to my store.

and i would spend my days baking and going to first grade.

finally came the moment

when i whipped up my first cake.

put it in the oven.

realized it was cooked by a light bulb.

and would take a while.

and everything was miniature.

and each cake would serve a small mouse or two.

and i had no way to buy more mixes to bake with.

and it was a dream i’d have to wait on.

–

years passed.

and i grew up and continued baking.

using a trial and error method.

and i especially loved to make cupcakes for people.

for any and all occasions.

the brits call them fairy cakes.

and that is the perfect name for them.

you love mexican chili chocolate?

coconut lemon cream?

caramel and pecan?

no problem, i can do that.

i wanted them to be pieces of art.

with flavors, and colors, and designs, and surprises.

all wrapped in pretty little papers.

but they didn’t always look that way.

–

so.

i decided to take a six week cake decorating class.

i signed up and bought all of my supplies.

 tips, turntables, icing knives, pastry bags, pans, colors and flower pins.

and went to my first class.

taught by a seasoned cake decorator.

my classmates –

were a mother and angsty daughter who had never decorated before.

and three teenage employees of the local ice cream store.

i figured i could hold my own with this group.

homework assignments

were to bake cakes and cupcakes and bring them in to decorate.

my kind of  homework!

and i imagined myself doing this.

and this.

but –

once we started mixing the frostings, the icings, the colors

my area actually looked more like this.

i had color all over the place, under my nails, in my cuticles, it dyed my hands and arms and my frosting got too warm and didn’t mix to the right consistency and i had a hard time filling the pastry bag without it getting all over and had to bite the tip off of it as i lost my scissors somewhere in the fray and i had to change tips to make flowers and edgings and all kinds of things and my book was covered in color and was wet and i clogged the class sink when i had to scrape off my buttercream frosting and start over a few times or so.

and somehow, the mother daughter team excelled.

and were naturals, working in sync like a precision ice dancing team.

and the baby teens perfectly piped their cakes, with nary a misstep.

and i wondered how they did it.

and i noticed the ice dancers preloaded their pastry bags at home.

using the colors they wanted, with the tips they needed, and closed off the ends.

and the teens just chose simple designs and one color and one consistency.

aha! that’s it!

but, as the weeks went on,

i never really got better at the process.

luckily our teacher was very kind and diplomatic.

and she liked my ‘shabby chic by accident’ and ‘evil clown’ style cupcakes.

and we all bonded in our mutual creative endeavor.

and shared stories and laughed a lot.

and i accepted that each week i would leave with a different color of skin.

and when we all made our final cakes for graduation day.

 the mom and daughter and teens all had beautiful cakes.

and when my teacher saw my final cake

(at the top of this post)

she said she had never seen a sheep and dachshund and polka dot cake before.

and it looked like a wonderful piece of art.

and she wanted a picture of it to keep in her book.

to show future classes.

and i was a happy baker.

 Stories aren’t the icing on the cake; they are the cake!

Peter Guber