That's Definitely Cake

Adventures in Marshmallow Fondant and Other Marginally-Executed Hobbies (plus upcoming event schedule and more)

My kids love the Netflix show Is It Cake. It’s a charming and wholesome reality series in which talented bakers compete at making weird cakes. A hiking boot cake, a plate-of-tacos cake. A replica Mona Lisa (really). Their goal is to fool a panel of celebrity judges and make them think their cake is a non-edible object, and if the judges get it wrong, they get to taste and judge the actual cake.

(Netflix producers: when you run out of celebrities to fill those judge slots, perhaps consider authors? We are very observant and we love cake.)

Anyway. I enjoy watching this show with my kids. It’s the perfect bedtime winddown: short episodes, low stakes, upbeat vibes.

Yet every time I watch, I’m ever-so-mildly haunted.

***

Like many unexpected hobbies, it started during the pandemic. It was February 2021, and my daughter’s seventh birthday approached. Crusty snow clung to the lawn: an outdoor party was out of the question. Covid vaccines weren’t yet widely available: an indoor party was off the table.

“What if I made you an incredible birthday cake?” I said in a moment of delusion. Baking has never been my strong suit. Could Betty Crocker mix from a box and frosting from a tub qualify as incredible enough to soothe the sting of not having a birthday party?

My daughter nodded. “An Ice Fairy cake.”

“So, like…Elsa?” I was already thinking of the Frozen-themed decor I could buy online.

“Elsa is not a fairy. And definitely not an Ice Fairy.”

“Right,” I said.

She’s now almost eleven, and if I asked her about it today, my daughter would probably deny that Ice Fairies ever existed in her imagination. Totally a phase. But at the time, getting it right felt all-important. I started researching fondant, and discovered a version made with microwaved marshmallows and powdered sugar. It looked easy, and reviews claimed that it tasted good, unlike traditional fondant, which tends to be beautiful but bland.

I made a test batch of the marshmallow fondant. It was like sticky Play-Doh. On my kitchen counter, while my kids squabbled over Manga Tiles, I molded a tiny snowman. I sculpted a plump snail and a slightly deformed cat. Sure, I could make Ice Fairies. I’d make a whole flock of them.

Armed with a “simple fondant fairy” inspo pic,

I went to work. Cue the horror.

Cue the…melting.

If the goal had been “cocktail sausage limbs,” this would have been dazzling.

Turns out, marshmallow fondant melts easily. Which is probably why pro bakers use regular fondant. Once I gave up on 3D fairies and did everything in flat, cookie-cutter shapes, though, the cake came out fine. Cute, even. Just don’t look too closely at those mouths.

Recently, the Creepy Ice Fairy of 2021 on her plate of shame showed up in my phone’s memories slideshow, and I shuddered.

“You could go on Nailed It,” my daughter teased over my shoulder, referencing another favorite baking show, this one specifically starring people who are terrible bakers.

***

A couple of years later, it was my son who furnished the niche cake request. He was turning seven and his greatest birthday wish was for a Monopoly cake.

This wasn’t surprising, as he’d been obsessed with the game for months. Our efforts to get him interested in other board games—ones that, say, required more strategy, relied less upon unfettered greed, and didn’t take six hours to complete—had been tepidly received. It didn’t matter that no one ever wanted to play with him. Monopoly was his number-one.

So I broke out the marshmallows again, but this time, I wasn’t going to fall for the internet’s fancy sculpted inspo-bait. I was going all two-dimensional, and it was going to work. I tinkered with the fondant’s colors until I had the perfect shade of Monopoly-board mint green, as well as pastel pinks and purples and blues to match the fake money. Tiny white squares dotted with pips became dice. I cannibalized an old Monopoly game that was missing a bunch of pieces, using the property cards as cake toppers and the rest as party décor. Can we call that upcycling? Sure.

Making this cake was super fun.

I was proud of it. My son loved it. Did it pass as professionally made? No way, but it didn’t need to. Between the prodigies and their slick creations on Is It Cake and the bumbling novices with their failures on Nailed It, there’s a lot of space for the rest of us to find joy in creating while being just okay.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Before writing was my job, it was one of my favorite hobbies, the thing I poured time and heart into simply because I enjoyed it. Turning an activity that I love into a career is a dream come true, absolutely, but it’s also meant finding a new hobby or two to fill that void.

Sometimes, that means resurrecting an old one. Last year, I picked up the acoustic guitar that I got when I was in high school. I hadn’t played it since…well, high school. (Shout out to my mom for storing that thing in her attic for literal decades.) I always did well with music, and with practice, I could probably be a decent guitar player. Not a great one. Not going to make a career out of it. But good enough to play around a campfire. (In theory. I have never once participated in a campfire with someone playing a guitar, but it sounds amazing. Who’s joining me?) To be honest, I’m not sure if I even care about progressing beyond my current level of being able to strum some pop hits and warble along. It’s just for fun.

Sometimes, it’s lovely and freeing to create just for fun.

***

Then there was the poop cake.

This one was my son, again. On the brink of eight, he still liked Monopoly, but the Poop Emoji had his whole heart.

I had watched enough reality baking television at this point to consider myself wise to the ways of using dowels and layers and alternate materials like “rice cereal treats” to make sculptural cakes. A giant, fondant-covered turd felt within my reach. (What a sentence I never thought I’d write.)

Tower in progress. We nicknamed it the “BM-pire State Building.”

Turns out, the brown marshmallow fondant was disturbingly realistic. The kitchen saw a lot of toilet humor that day.

Still, it’s not fooling any panel of judges. There are wonky parts and imperfections galore. But I laughed so much while making it, and so did the birthday boy, who helped quite a bit. For that reason alone, I’d say we nailed it.

***

As birthday season approaches again in our house, I’m happy to have another weird cake request on deck. Happy to knead that sticky marshmallow concoction and create something imperfect with my bare, food-coloring-stained hands. And you know what? For this occasional hobby that I am not very good at, but enjoy nonetheless, I have the Creepy Ice Fairy of 2021 to thank.

Adding the face did not help. At least she’s happy!

***

Moving on from cake stories. I truly enjoyed writing this (hooray for fun hobby-writing!) so thanks for reading it. Hopefully, it provided a little break from doomscrolling for both of us.

This winter, I’ve been trying to finish something draft-shaped that might become a novel. Writing isn’t the easiest thing these days. Once again, the times are unprecedented. But I remind myself that I finished Remarkably Bright Creatures during those first months of the pandemic and writing often felt pointless then, too, in the face of wild and scary things happening. I’m glad I pushed through then, and I’ll get this one done, too.

Besides, I’ve told myself in my sternest stern-parent tone that I need to get this manuscript off my desk or I’m not allowed to hang out with you guys next month. And I want to come hang out with you! In all of these places!

More details and registration links are on my website. Note that these dates are only through the last weekend of April. Stay tuned for a super fun paperback tour announcement that I cannot wait to share with you.

Until then,