The Beginning

   I've always been fascinated with cake decorating. Even as a young child, I would design my own birthday cakes for my mother to execute-- usually a Wilton doll dress cake decorated in somewhat garish patterns of pink and purple.  My sweet mama would bake those cakes and decorate them exactly how I had asked her to, and those cakes meant the world to me.  I can still imagine her in our kitchen, squeezing approximately 600 icing stars over the skirt of those doll cakes (probably with a few choice words running through her head!), and shooing me out so the finished product would be a surprise. I adored those cakes-- a custom cake just for me? It doesn't get any better than that!
    Fast forward to my tenth birthday.  I was far too "grown" in my own mind for a doll cake, so when it came time for my birthday, Mom graciously offered to bake the cake for my party and let me decorate it myself.  Did she know how fascinated I was with the whole process and want to share her skills?  Or was she thrilled to not have to get a raging case of carpal tunnel from fighting with a star tip?  Perhaps a little of both!
I can't begin to tell you how excited I was to decorate that cake, and I can't begin to tell you what a disaster it was.  It was a plain old rectangular sheet cake, frosted in white, and I just went to town!  There were pink and green polka dots, gigantic letters (off center, of course!) marching across it, and what I envisioned to be a "rose garden" in one corner.  There is no photographic evidence of this cake, thank heavens, but the memory of it is forever burned into my brain. I LOVED IT!  Looking back, I somewhat pity my party guests for having to partake in such a thing.  *shudder*
    Over the next few years, I started pestering Mom to teach me how to bake.  She let me start with cake mixes, which I could bake and lightly decorate for our dessert some evenings.  It became known at our house as "Abby Cake."  From there, as I got older, she and I would traditionally bake the cake on the cover of December's Southern Living magazine every year.  I have particularly hilarious memories of the cake that required Fruit by the Foot fruit snacks to make a festive bow topper.  It was a disaster, but we laughed ourselves silly about it.
    We stayed up until 2 am once, creating a 50th anniversary cake for her aunt and uncle who were not able to have a cake at their wedding.  We decided to go all out-- three tiers, separated with columns, icing roses, gold leaves, an ornate topper, the whole shebang.  To say that we bit off more than we could chew would be an understatement, but we were so proud of ourselves when it was finally finished. Fifteen minutes into the party, it got knocked over.  Whoops!
    After I graduated college and moved out on my own, a friend of mine asked out of nowhere if I wanted to accompany her to cake decorating classes.  I immediately said yes, and attended classes for two years.  I was thrilled to be able to combine all the new techniques with the old lessons I had learned from baking with Mom.  During the summer of 2006, my aunt asked me to make a "fun and funky" Sweet Sixteen cake for my cousin.  It was my first "official" cake, and it came out like this...

It was not anywhere NEAR what I had imagined it to be, but it was the beginning.  I've learned so much since then, but what has never changed is my love for decorating cakes.  It is my hope, now, that I can give to others the feeling I had when my mom created those cakes for me so long ago...

"A custom cake just for me? It doesn't get any better than that!"