Simple cakes.

About a year ago I seriously considered becoming a baker for a living. I contemplated culinary school for a while, and baked for money on the side. It quickly became apparent that few people will pay money for muffins or cookies or cupcakes, because pretty much anyone can make those. What most people will spend money on is a nicely decorated cake. Unfortunately for me, I dread decorating cakes for people. I am completely self-taught yet a perfectionist so they take me forever and rarely do I finish with a product that I'm truly happy with.

I do enjoy baking simple cakes though. Or cakes I get to chose the design for. Yesterday I got to decorate a cake for my brother Joel's birthday. Honestly, I'd been looking forward to it for a week because I knew I could keep it simple and have it look just how I like. (Hopefully Joel liked it, too.) It's pictured above (obviously).

This evening I did something that I've never done before... decorated a fake cake. A cake made out of styrofoam actually. A friend of a friend asked me to decorate one for this benefit her company is sponsoring for the American Cancer Society called Shave to Save. She gave me pretty much all creative license, so below is what I came up with. I used the theme for their flyer to decorate it, and with a little help from my graphic design genius of a brother Cory, I pulled off the logo which is exciting. But it's still simple. Which I like.

(It was a HUGE "cake", so I thought I'd show you our

kitchen table to get grips on the scale of things...)

Anyway, it was great having an excuse to bake some things (and fake bake some things), and for the finished products to be exactly as I wanted them. Yes, I suppose I am a selfish baker... (P.S. Yes, I still do have plans to someday learn how to use my own camera so my pictures don't turn out like crap like these did...)