Downhill From Here

A short sentence from the soon-to-be-six-year-old as he departed from the bathroom got my attention. "Uh - Grandma! I think we've got a Big Problem. There's two things..."

Me (gulping): "What are they?"

"One: The toilet might be plugged up. Two: We're out of toilet paper!"


Okay, so that's the way the day started. Now the Soon-To-Be-Six-Year-Old turns six tomorrow and I wanted to make him a special cake. When I visited in March, I had a baker's catalogue with me and showed Sage a picture of some silicone cupcake "people" you can decorate up to look like monsters. They're a silicon cupcake cup set on big colored silicone shoes. They're pretty cute and Sage agreed these would make a great birthday cake for his sixth birthday.

Tonight, after the kids departed, I set to work. The cupcakes baked okay, but were a bit wobbly. The problem was, in the picture they showed, their cake tops rise majestically out of the cupcake wrappers and mine barely came to the top. Their tops were big and rounded and they used wonderful squiggles of icing to make it look like long orange fur. I'd have to add a gob of frosting to make mine 'rise' out of the cupcake cup. I mixed up an extra large batch of buttercream icing and then sliced some of the extra cupcakes I'd baked in half and 'glued' the tops on the silly feet cupcakes in the silicon molds. At least, now my monster people had tops big enough to frost.

But my icing proved too soft for good 'hair' texture. The icing hair was soon melting in my overheated kitchen and losing its shape. Plus, some of the glued tops of the other cupcakes I'd attached were overwhelming the silicon feet and they were lurching forward once I'd iced them, unable to stand up. Things were getting wonky in a hurry.

I jammed on Skittles for eyes and gummy candies for gooey smiles, then hurried the cupcakes one by one out to the spare refrigerator as I finished each one. Suddenly, making twelve Silly Monster cupcakes was assuming bigger proportions. I'd been at it for two hours when I carefully took the last one out. The top shelf of the refrigerator looked like a drunken party of frosting monsters. One leaned confidentially forward into another like he was imparting a drunken secret. Another had planted himself face forward onto the glass shelf. When I tried to right him, his face fell off in my hands. I had more frosting on my hands than I wanted to lick off. The door knobs on the back door and the refrigerator door were sticky with orange or blue icing (the color of my monsters).

Oh dear! The things I can talk myself into just for the approval of a sweet little ole six year old! I think he'll approve even if it wasn't the easiest cake decorating job. I have a much higher esteem for those in the industry who earn their living decorating with icing.

Tomorrow's the big day!