The 5 Emotional Stages Of Making A Child’s Birthday Cake

Every year your children get older, there’s something to add to the list of party challenges. Home vs venue, whether to invite the whole class or selected friends, and what to put in the party bags. But perhaps the biggest challenge, the Everest of parties, if you will, is the cake.

Recently, chef Yotam Ottolenghi posted that his Lego cake ‘wasn’t perfect’ – so it’s reassuring to know that even the top dogs can find it a challenge. Here’s what all parents go through when they make a birthday cake…

Star Wars, Paw Patrol, a football team winning the scoring goal, Lego or a Disney Princess – just a few of the words that parents hear and then get the absolute fear.

You pray daily that they’ll say they just want a chocolate sponge, or something that you can fudge (like a swamp), but you know deep down, it’s going to be something super complicated.

From the moment they ask until the party, your stomach is laced with nausea that you are going to totally let your child down. Not to mention be the talk of the school/laughing stock as your pirate ship looks more Titanic than Pirates Of The Caribbean.

You pore over Instagram shots, cookbooks and YouTube videos of people icing cakes, and even consider a trial run late one Saturday night, after a second bottle of red wine has been opened.

While you might not try the whole cake, you decide to do a couple of practice runs on the sponge and laying icing over it. After all, they get a few test runs on Bake Off, don’t they?

You now realise that you are mainlining cake every day to eat up the test cakes, and the outfit you were going to wear for the party might be a little tight.

A week to go, and you are concerned about your efforts – this is when you start Googling ‘local bakeries, quick turnaround’ and ‘cake toppers’. Cheating is fine, but you know deep down that you want people to know you made it.

Mainly the pride, of course. You see, everyone at that party – EVERY single parent, knows how you feel. That there is even a cake on the table is seen as a tribute to your efforts. And only one person says, ‘Oh, it’s a UNICORN!’ before stifling giggles.

Your child is jubilant because, let’s face it, they don’t know what it could look like if a professional made it. They just see what they asked for, and that’s the best reward of all. That, and another slice of cake, of course.