Birthday cake blues

It's Caleb's 2nd birthday party tomorrow and I'm feeling a mixture of pride and terror. Pride that we've even managed to get him to this point with all appendages in place, terror at the prospect of confronting the whole birthday cake ordeal.

You see, I SUCK at birthday cakes. As a kid I loved nothing more than flicking through that huge Women's Weekly Birthday Cake book and picking out that year's indulgence of choice, and once I became a mummy I entertained fantasies of bake, bake, baking up such fantasy cakes with the ease of Martha Stewart and the sex appeal of a domestic geisha.

But alas, it was not to be. Take for instance, my daughter's 2nd birthday cake. We went through the book together and she proudly picked out a butterfly. (Actually, she picked out a castle first until I convinced her Mummy would have a much higher chance of success at something that was only on one level.)

Now, in the BOOK, the cake looked like a beautifully crafted vision of butterfly-mixed-with-confectionary goodness.

In Jenny-land, the cake looked like this:



On the bright side, the kids devoured it within minutes so I wasn't taunted by my inadequacies for long.

So tomorrow...I'm leaning towards a muffin stack. Then at least people can congratulate me on being novel. Wish me luck!