For this week, I have chosen a form of art that some might contest as being art.

Cake decorating is, in my humble opinion, definitely an art form because although it seems simple, it is far more challenging than expected. An example of this is hyper-realistic cakes. Baking can also be considered an art form as it takes precision and practice.

For this mini-project, I decided to decorate two mini-cakes, one in a heart shape and one in a square shape. I am using the recipe AI suggested in my Topic 4 post, which is a lemon blueberry cake with lemon cream cheese icing. My plan going in is to do the old-style lace icing for the heart-shaped cake and the modern minimal icing and fruit for the square cake. I am writing this aspect before attempting to create this, so by the end of the post, we shall see how well it goes.

I started by baking the cakes according to the recipe (mostly), with one in a square shape for the square cake and one in a circle shape to make the heart. I made the icing next as the cakes were cooking (the icing was to die for). Then, after letting them cool, I cut each cake into four pieces.

I stacked the cake pieces to see if they were going to be the right height, and they were, but this is also where I ran into my first speed bump. As you can see in the picture, the round cake pieces do not stack well because they are thicker in the middle than on the edge, making it tilt more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. To combat this I ended up slicing the domed parts of the cake before stacking.

I also cut triangles out of the top of the round pieces to make the heart shape. I then used the icing I made to put in between the cake layers. This is where speed bump number two comes in. Unfortunately, the weight of the cake layers and the softness of the icing meant the icing got squeezed out from between the layers despite my persistence to get it to stay.

Eventually, I gave up on the icing between the layers issue and just tried to get the entire heart iced. This was significantly harder than anticipated because the icing was runnier than it needed to be for what I was doing. I did get the heart cake iced, although it did not look very visually appealing. Speed bump number three came when I tried to create the lace detail for the heart cake, but once again, the icing was way too soft. Every time I tried to make little bumps, it would just droop down the cake.

Since I was at my wit’s end with the heart cake, I moved on to the square cake, where I once again ran into the icing being too soft between the layers. It was ok, though, because I was able to use the droopy icing to get the smear look I was going for on the sides, sort of.

I did end up covering the sides of the square cake with more icing, however, because I had a lot of it leftover from not doing the lace on the heart cake, and I personally prefer to eat cake with a strong ratio of cake to icing.

The picture to the right is of the square cake the day after I finished icing it when I was able to cut it and share it with some friends.

All in all, this was a fun way to explore the art of cake decorating, even though it absolutely did not go as smoothly as I had planned. This made me appreciate cake artists SO much more because although it was fun to do, the struggle was real. It takes so much practice and talent to pull off the gorgeous cakes that professional bakers do, and I believe their type of art should get more recognition than it does.

I would like to report that I was told by a few friends that even though the cakes may not have been lookers, they tasted delicious, which I am super happy about. I will also add, and maybe boast, that the lemon cream cheese icing recipe that I used is something both my coworker and I would eat by the spoonful; it was so good!

It was a really neat experience to use AI to find a new recipe, and because it worked out so well, I think I might use this technique in the future when I want to try something new! Maybe AI and technology are better than I thought and more versatile after all.

All is well that bakes well,

-Kristen