Beautiful Baker

   A few years ago, Cindi and I decided it would be fun to learn to decorate cakes.  At the time, our friend Wendy was a Wilton representative/teacher at Michael's.  So we took the class and learned the stuff and had our fun, and then we started making cakes for our kids and for baby showers and wedding showers.  We don't charge money to our friends, because we never know how the cake will turn out and we want free reign over the design!

  Then we did it.  We offered to make a wedding cake for a dear, beautiful girlfriend.  What were we thinking?  We made fondant and pretty leaves and bought a tiered stand.  It turned out fine, but as we finally set it on the cake table and stepped away, I turned to Cindi and said, "I will never do this again."  

  Then another dear, beautiful girlfriend of ours got engaged, and asked us to make her cake.  We lovingly made each miniature sunflower, hundreds of them, out of fondant.  I set them on my table to dry overnight.  The next morning there were tiny ants all over them.  I cried, threw them away, and we lovingly made hundreds more miniature sunflowers, and when we set the finished cake on the table I turned to Cindi and said, "I will never do this again."  

(that's Tanner 'helping' me in the picture, not Cindi! haha!)

  A couple of months ago, Cindi and I both received bouquets of roses to our doors....from a dear, beautiful girlfriend who has recently gotten engaged.  She wants her cake to be square and covered in fondant.  In a few weeks I'll be rolling out that sticky stuff and covering the holes with flowers and ribbon and maybe I'll cry, and when we set it in the car to be delivered to the church I am sure I will turn to Cindi and say, "I will never do this again."  


   But I've decided, I can cry and complain and hate making cakes, or I can count my blessings.  Oh, how I love all the beautiful girls we have made cakes for!  We've shared in the celebrations of their lives, marriages and babies and engagements and birthdays!  How fortunate we are to be in the middle of that kind of event!  And the appreciation of these beauties when we 'unveil' their cakes...always grateful, always in awe, no matter what state the poor cake is in.  Our girlfriends are our biggest fans, and we are their's.  

  Also, the blessing of getting to spend time with my great friend while we are complaining and eating icing off our fingers and covering up mistakes and making awful-looking roses (me) and beautiful, perfect roses (her), and even starting all over.  We laugh, we talk about what's going on in our lives, we just spend time together.  We're busy, cakes give us an excuse to take a break from life and just hang out together.  I don't love making cakes, but I love the women whose life events the cakes represent, and I love making cakes with my friend!  

  And how about the appreciation I now have for my friend Wendy?!  She's gone from cake decorating teacher at Michael's to full-time business owner cake extraordinaire!  

  Wendy owns Coffey Cakes, and she does all kinds of cakes, but I am most impressed with her wedding cakes.  Weddings are, hopefully, a one-time thing...and brides (and brides' mothers!) can be hard to deal with!  The cake has to be perfect for the perfect day, and THAT is pressure!  Wendy takes it in stride, though, because Wendy loves what she does!  She loves to meet the newly engaged couple and be around the energy and anticipation they bring to the planning, she loves seeing the look on the bride's face when she sees the finished product, and she especially loves spending the extra time with her husband...he helps her with some of her deliveries and is her right-hand-man!  

  Even though Wendy is no longer our teacher, she is still teaching us.  She gives us tips and encourages our work, even though we are nowhere near her level.  Wendy is a Beautiful Baker!