From Beginning to Birch Tree

Here I am, doing something I never thought that I’d be doing: writing a blog about my baking.

Quick background: I didn’t truly fall in love with baking until maybe about four years ago. I’m not sure why it took nearly 21 years to kick in—maybe it was because I had to walk away from dancing—but I’m so thankful that it did.

My mom is from Georgia and my dad is from the great mitten state of Michigan. Yes, I was born here; yes, I say “y’all” more often than any other person I’ve met up in Michigan; and yes, I do have a Southern accent with certain words (thanks, Momma).

Being as my mom is from the South, being in the kitchen has always been something important; whether she was making banana bread from scratch or heating up jarred spaghetti sauce, the kitchen was the center point in my household.

So anyways.

In 2015, I dropped an insane amount of money on my pearly white, 7-quart, professional grade KitchenAid mixer (I had to post a picture, because it's just so pretty) in order to bake my cousin’s wedding cake. Yes, I cried when I hauled the box in off of the front porch, and continue to cry as I unpacked it. In all honesty, that wedding cake was a pain in my derrière, but my cousin loved it, and that was all that actually mattered.

One of my best work friends approached me back in July-ish 2017 about making the cake and cupcakes for her wedding. Literally one of the most laid back brides I have ever met. I ask what color liners she wants: “I don’t care. You pick. Just don’t make me make any more decisions.”

Thankfully, I’d like to think I knew her well enough to pick the colors, so I went with purple (her favorite color) and green (to match the natural feel of the wedding). The cake for her and her hubby-to-be was going to be simple: five layers of sprinkle filled cake with TONS of my homemade buttercream (her hubby is obsessed with my buttercream. I have given him a container full of it before.). The catch? She wanted it to look like a birch tree.

Lord have mercy, I might have panicked a little bit, but thank the Lord for YouTube and The Icing Artist. That woman’s tutorial saved the cake, and taught me some fantastic tricks.

Needless to say—and yes, I’m going toot my own horn here for a minute, so y’all bear with me—that cake turned out looking like a little birch tree stump! (My fiancé was put on cake holding duty while we ventured almost an hour north to their home, where the wedding was held, and had to deal with me jamming out to T.I. and Jay-Z the whole ride. Sorry, not sorry.)

The end of September in Michigan could bring all different types of weather: snow, rain, cold, warm. We’re all used to having some of the most bipolar weather, but no one expected a 92* day on September 23, 2017. Miraculously enough, my buttercream frosting stood strong in the heat of their barn, and the eight dozen cupcakes I had made dwindled away throughout the evening.