Birthday cakes: they’ll ruin a parent every time

My mum made me some beautiful Birthday cakes over the years. And yet, every time my children’s birthdays roll around I’m filled with fear and a hatred towards icing sugar and butter, writes Kara Jung.

I can’t remember how old I was turning.

I can’t remember what presents I received. I just remember Mum made me the butterfly cake of my dreams from the Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book. Glorious, beautiful, sugary magic. That she made it was the icing on top.

So, when my son’s first birthday approached, I got it into my head I would create his cake. And every year since.

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Without fail, there’s always panic, some character-building epiphanies, a meltdown and tears — both from laughter and the miserable realisation that it’s too late to fix and I have to present said cake to the party table, often in front of parents I’ve only just met, or in front of parents who just weeks before presented a grand, colourful, gourmet creation worthy of a Pinterest post

Creating a masterpiece cake is the stuff of parental nightmare. Picture: iStock

The first year, the bee was a winner. Amateur, packet mix, simple, but a winner.

The following year’s fire truck was a small disaster, with the icing so runny it looked like it had melted in a fire.

The frog, I’m calling a winner, despite a late-night run to the supermarket for eggs, more icing sugar and chocolate for sustenance.

Then our daughter came along and I did a butterfly cake. Not THE butterfly cake, but a simpler design (I knew I couldn’t replicate such greatness). It was worthy of a Nailed It meme.

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The following year, her beautiful iced-name slid off the cake and down the side onto the platter.

Suffice to say, no cake I’ve ever made has looked like this. Picture: supplied

By my son’s fourth birthday, it had become a tradition. The request? A lion. I have a hazy memory of crying, slumped against the fridge at 1am the night before the party, having mixed several bowls of icing and ruined two cakes.

As the years have rolled by, there’s been many many fails; a couple of winners.

Recently, my son celebrated his 7th birthday and this time around, he wanted a western diamondback rattlesnake, the one responsible for most of the snake bite deaths in northern Mexico, the greatest number of snake bites in the US, and the (latest) near-death of my sanity.

They are light brown, with a diamond pattern.

LIGHT BROWN.

But this year? I was going to be totally chill. Backyard party, apple bobbing and water play, casual . . . and I was not going to have a meltdown about a bloody cake at 1am.

And so I made it the morning of the party.

The pressure of creating the perfect cake and not stuffing it up is great. Picture: iStock

By 9.32am I was texting my husband (who had whisked the kids off to cricket practice) and several mum mates about whether it would be considered child cruelty to serve my ultimate cake fail? Did they think people would be able to tell it was a snake and not giant poo?

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But when my son returned from cricket and raced inside to see my creation, he yelled, “Mum, it’s the best cake ever in the world, the only way you could have done any better was if you caught an actual western diamondback rattlesnake.”

And, wham. I didn’t really care what anyone else thought.

That’s the magic that makes you forget the pain, front the party and think you can do it all again the next year.

Birthday magic, with icing on top.

Kara Jung is digital editor at Messenger News.