When Roy came home with a gag gift for me - Pokemon cakepan he'd bought from Goodwill for 99¢ - and said we should make a Pikachu cake for the birthday party we would be throwing, I overconfidently assumed I could make it look amazing.
You see, April 2nd will be Evie and Ringo's 2nd birthday, and April 6th will be Roy's 23rd. With Lucie in college now, we wouldn't actually see her on her 19th birthday in May. So we decided to celebrate all four birthdays in one night!
The request was chocolate, and I began to bake and cool the cake before heading over to a friend's house for a turkey dinner. When we came home, Pikachu seemed to have formed a giant crack down his body, like a horribly botched decapitation attempt had taken place while we were out. I thought, "Well, I'll fill his sorry wounds with cream cheese frosting no one will be the wiser!
At this point, I realized that the only real food coloring I had was yellow... so, being pretty tired (it was late, after all!) I decided to go for a minimalist look: I would outline the cake in white, microwave the rest of the frosting with yellow coloring, and just drizzle the rest on over the cake with the outline to stop the frosting from running beyond the white border! It was a lazy plan, but it would work. Right?
WRONG!
Lucky for me, my husband and sister were entertained rather than offended at what I was attempting to pass off as a birthday cake made with love.
It didn't take long for me to tuck my tail between my legs and give in to the temptation to simply slather Pikachu in normal white frosting and forget the decorating all together. The end result looked pretty ugly, but admittedly still smelled delicious. However, my troubles were far from over: I had forgotten birthday candles for the birthday cake as well!
I had a massive bag of tea lights in a drawer to add insult to injury. Thankfully, Roy and Lucie were very forgiving over my tasty monstrosity.
In the end, everything worked out fine. As ugly as he turned out to be, Pikachu was indeed delicious. My loved ones were both fed and entertained, and I learned a valuable lesson about the downsides of over-confidence and lack of preparation.
