My daughter Zoey looks up at me, her face a mixture of excitement and anticipation. In her hands she holds a pastry bag, squeezing it just tightly enough that a bit of the rich, dark chocolate, buttercream frosting inside has begun to escape its shiny, silver, open star tip.

“Can I frost it now, Mommy?” Zoey asks hopefully, her voice faintly twinged with impatience.

The cake that sits on the table in front of her—the one on the business end of the buttercream pastry bag—has been our labor of love for the past two days. After Zoey announced that the only thing she wanted to do this weekend was make a “fancy” cake, I made it my mission to make sure I provided the perfect cake-making experience for her. And after hours of baking, making buttercream frosting from scratch, creating colorful flowers out of flavored Tootsie Rolls, and mixing, rolling out, and covering a two-layer chocolate cake with pale turquoise marshmallow fondant, it appears that we have perfectly executed the task at hand.

It looks simply delectable. Continue reading “Week 37: Redefining Perfection | Everyday Nostalgia”