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Letters from London

Dear Readers,

Winter is such hard work. There are so many clothing layers to put on and take off. It’s exhausting. Then spring arrives and it’s finally light enough to see the dust balls clearly for the first time. I was working myself into a cleaning frenzy this past week and felt as if I’d pulled a hernia. Was all this furious cleaning worth it?

It reminds me of the first cake I decorated in my cake class last year. It required at least six layers of icing – all perfectly smoothed. I hand made at least forty sugar roses and chose twenty perfect ones for the top. My lettering was precise as was the icing line work and piping. I had spent all weekend icing that darn bit of Styrofoam (yes, baking was not included in the class so we decorated bits of styrofoam) and my grade was 59%. Failing. I felt like crying. I had never received such a low grade in my life. I thought the cake was absolutely beautiful – pink covered with white roses, but my teacher thought it was over the top. Since when is that a bad thing? All the other cakes were so boring, I would never buy them in a shop.

The next cake was for spring, so for this one, I shed the many layers of icing and let spring take over. I slapped on some icing and added just one side butterfly to the top and a few to the sides. A bit of piping work and Bob’s your uncle. They say that over here, as in Ta Da, it’s done. I was confused when I first heard it because a Bob is my uncle. Anyway, on this cake, even though my butterfly broke its wing on the way to class and had to be iced back together, I got an 88 one of the top grades. I think my teacher felt guilty because she’d been too harsh the first time. I now know how some of the other kids in my class felt when they said they were unfairly graded.

Anyway, in cakes as in spring, sometimes you just have to let it flow – dust balls, uneven icing, and all.

Happy Spring!
Michele


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© 2007–2009 Michele Young