Cakes are My Masterpieces

Renoir, Van Gogh, Monet, artists whose work is admired by all, inspiring to some, and appreciated by most.  I don't know much about art in the painting, or sculpting sense. I didn't study art history but I appreciate good art. My art is the cakes I make. I love the sense of creating something from nothing. I love the freedom cake decorating allows me to use to come up with an idea from someone else's vision, or using my own vision to create my masterpiece.  That's what a cake truly is, a masterpiece. A cake usually take me about 8-9 (and sometimes even more) hours to complete depending on the intricacy of the details. Since I love details, I usually add an extra hour, or 2 or 3 on to my cakes to complete the details I see in my mind.  From mixing ingredients, and baking, to cooling, mixing frosting, and then decorating, a process emerges, and a masterpiece takes shape.

Anyone who says a baker isn't an artist doesn't know what goes into a beautiful cake. There is blood, sweat, and tears, and then more sweat and maybe more tears. The sweat when you are turning your pan upside down and fretting that only half the cake will fall out of the pan. This then leads way to the tears you cry when that happens knowing you either have to start all over, or become an engineer in the next few hours to figure out how to keep the cake together. The anger you have at yourself when you have just finished perfecting the "smooth" finish on a cake only to reach for the next decorating bag and swipe your hand over the frosted cake! Then more tears because the 45 minutes you just spent was for nothing as you have to "re-do" the smoothing. Then there are those times that even with a perfect vision in your head of what you want, you get a "bad icing" kind of night, (they are not a myth,) and the vision you have suddenly changes because your icing won't do what you wanted it to do!

It's time consuming, frustrating, exhausting, exhilarating, and a whole lot of fun! Art is in the eye of the beholder, whether it's a Michelangelo, a Van Gogh, a Renoir, or one of Andrea's Custom Confections, each in their own way is a masterpiece. Here are some of my masterpieces. Enjoy your day and go create your own masterpiece!