how wonderful.

i owe zach a cake. so when he texted me yesterday and said it was his nephew's birthday and could that count, i was happy. because making cakes for kids is infinitely more fun than making cakes for adults. at least that's my belief.

what sucks, though, is when you make an incredibly vital mistake first thing in the cake-decorating process. and by you i mean me, and i'm not speaking hypothetically at all. i'm speaking this-is-the-story-of-my-life.

it all began this morning when i set out to make this iron man cake.

i printed off a picture of iron man from the internet and decided the most effective way to do this would be to poke holes in the cake in the places where i needed my lines to go. only i couldn't find any toothpicks, so i opted for a knife instead. and as long as i was poking holes in my cake, i figured, why not just cut the lines into the cake?

(as you can tell, it's been several months since i've made a cake. as in, several, several months.)

and everything was fine and the cake looked great and i piped the brown lines on and then i started adding the stars. and then the cake started collapsing. meaning, the entire left side of the face began falling away from the right side of the cake.

no big deal, i figured. i'll pop some toothpicks in and everything will be fine.

false. no toothpicks. also i would like to give a shoutout to the makers of pillsbury cakes for creating the moistest, softest funfetti in all of the world. great for eating. not so great for decorating.

as the cake fell farther and farther away (further? i can't remember. guess that's probably a sign i should be studying for my mcom exam next week..) and the frosting proved incapable of holding it up, i decided to try a new approach. namely, i cut the offending pieces from the cake and placed them on a plate to be reattached at a later time.

but the cake wasn't finished. so as more and more cake fell away, i decided to try a new approach, one which i like to call "go for the 3D, multilayered look."

i wasn't feelin' great about it, but i was feelin' fine about it. so i kept on truckin'.

and i finished the cake. and everything was fine. and i was happy.

and then i cleaned up the kitchen and looked at the cake again.

aaaaand there went the rest of the cheek.

so it's currently sitting on the other side of my table, hidden behind my computer, propped up with a cup. i'd really, really, really rather not look at it anymore.

cakes suck.