Know your customer
My son turned three this week. Its the first birthday that he's understand enough to get excited about it. And he sure was excited. He had expectations about what a birthday entailed and one of those things was cake. A cake with Lightning McQueen on it.
In a year where covid has taken away so many little flourishes I figured the least thing I could to was make him a cake. Im also a child of the women's weekly birthday cake book, with photos from my own birthdays and the cakes that went with them firmly imprinted in my memory.
It was a workday and I didn't have a whole lot of time on my hands for cake decorating so I went with a can't go wrong packet mix. Only it did go wrong.
The cake part was fine, but the icing went...weird. It separated but in a really strange way which made it really grainy. By this time it was late in the day. I had no ingredients to remake icing. I could go to the shops but it would be annoying and add stress to the day.
Then I remembered who my customer was. A three year old who had no expectations of what a cake should be other than a candle and Lightning McQueen. That was still achievable.
I slathered the cake with rough as guts icing, complete with bumpy race track. I positioned a few cars and done. Ugly but met the requirements.
And the three year old was thrilled.
