I started decorating cakes over 10 years ago. I never took a class but learned everything I could from books. I spent a lot of time and money at craft and bakery supply stores. Before I knew it, I had a whole cabinet full of cake decorating supplies.

Then one spring a good friend asked me to make her wedding shower cake. It was a single tier, round chocolate cake with daisies for embellishments. I spent hours doing a basketweave pattern around the cake and making perfect little white daisies to adorn it.

The next day my wrist ached horribly and I watched with morbid fascination, as my cake got dissected and then greedily devoured. That’s when I realized that a career in cake decorating was never going to happen for me. It can be an art, but like sand or ice sculpture, it’s transient. While there’s something to be said for artists who prefer to work in mediums that will be destroyed, I prefer to hang my art on the wall. Forever.

I stopped making cakes after that and a few months later when my mother-in-law got interested in decorating, I gave her all my supplies. I lost my passion for baking and for years every occasion was celebrated with a store bought cake. Until my son’s first birthday when I bought a 3 dimensional car cake pan. It turned out ok. It looked like a car, but it kind of tasted like one too. So for his next couple birthday’s I just went back to ordering the cakes.

Then about a week before Father’s Day 2007, Woman’s Day magazine featured a “Summer’s Best Party Cake So Easy to Do”. I made the cake using ingredients I bought at the grocery store. Cake out of the box. Icing from the can. Best of all my son got to help me make it. We placed Teddy Grahams, colored Goldfish, Hersey Nuggets and other candy embellishments on a 2 layer, 8 inch round chocolate cake. It came out great and tasted even better.

With that experience my cake obsession was renewed. I bought Cake Decorating for Dummies to get inspiration and ideas. As soon as I read the table of contents I knew it was not for me. Make my cake from scratch? My own icing? Assembling my cake decorating kit? Whoa that’s way too involved. Been there, done that.

This time I am determined to put more fun into cake decorating and less work. I’m going to do this the Simple Cake Decorating way!