C

Cake

I watch very little tv, but a cake show can really suck me in. I especially like Cake Boss which I think is better than Ace of Cakes, because Cake Boss' cakes, IMHO, are more amazing. Ace of Cakes' cakes are often rather cartoonish. When I watch these shows, I am overwhelmed with the desire to make a really beautiful cake. An elaborate cake is a combination of art and function, and then you eat it so it's not just hanging around the house taking up room, which appeals to me. And yet I've never taken a cake decorating class. One reason I have not is that I have no desire to make stupid icing roses. I think roses are lame.  I want to make a spectacular cake, something akin to the CB's Marie Antoinette cake with edible golden cameos and French lace and architecture reproduced in icing. Or, say, the Bloomington skyline in cake, fondant, and modeling chocolate, complete with people and maybe twinkling Christmas lights and a working courthouse clock. They do not teach these things in any cake decorating class I've seen. Oh sure, you say, you have to start somewhere. But I don't really want to go through the laborious process of learning how. I just want to have my friends over and roll out this cake that is so fabulous it makes their eyes bug out.  The really odd thing is that I don't even like cake all that much.  Photo: son and the double layer chocolate cake he made just because he felt like it.