IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT CUPCAKE

Forest Gump famously said “Life is like a box of chocolates”, but I say “Life’s like a cupcake”.

I’ve just started a cake decorating course, in my pursuit of the art of making the perfect cupcake. I’m doing the course with a great friend of mine and our first lesson was yesterday. We learnt how to mix royal icing just right, in order to get it into a piping bag and then squeeze it back out again.

It was a huge mess getting it into the piping bag, but it actually looked much better when we squeezed it out. By the end of the two hours of squeezing, we were finally producing some very beautiful icing patterns and were quite proud of ourselves. It’ll be interesting to see how “professional” our decorating skills are by the end of the 7 week course.
I’m going to try to share what I learn and some photos along the way in a weekly blog….but being a “blog rookie”, I’m not promising anything in regards to the regularity of my blogs. I’ll do my best.

It seems to me that my obsession with cupcakes is a reflection of my life’s journey in some ways. I was on a pretty stable and lovely life journey, when all of a sudden I was forced to take a detour in May of 2009. It was at this time that I was diagnosed with breast cancer at 39 years of age.

But like any detour, you’re forced to travel the way the signs take you in order to get to your destination. Even though it’s a bit scary when you don’t recognise the roads you’re on, you still can’t give up until you get there. So my journey continues…..and I hope to share some of it with you in my “planned” weekly blogs.

My cancer detour has certainly been very scary and painful at times, but the wonderful thing is that along the way I’ve been seeing and learning some amazing, life-changing things. So even though there have been things lost, I’ve also gained so much and for this, I’m grateful. I’m learning so much about myself and about this awesome and most beautiful “sweet treat” called LIFE!

I’d like to explain why I think “life is like a cupcake” by sharing a new example each week of my experiences with cupcakes and how they relate to life. Here goes my first thought:
When someone else makes them, cupcakes always seem to look so beautiful.

I love cupcake shops. The cupcakes always look so colourful, beautifully decorated, and simply perfect. Sometimes I just window-shop and dream about them, but at other times, they’re so irresistible that I just have to have one. Often they taste just as delicious as they look, but funnily enough, sometimes they don’t taste as good as I expected.

It’s the same when we look at someone else’s life. It always seems to look better than ours for some reason. We envy them, we want what they’ve got, we want to live in a house like theirs, drive a car like theirs, have a job like theirs, have a husband or kids like theirs, have a figure like theirs and the list goes on. But then when we get the house like theirs along with the HUGE mortgage, or the car like theirs with the ASTRONOMICAL monthly repayments, their life doesn’t seem as delicious as it did before. Or when we hear from a mutual friend that the person we envied is going through a terrible divorce, or they’ve lost their house because of overspending, their life doesn’t seem so perfect anymore, does it?

So, it’s great – I’ve finally come to the realisation that my life is the only one I’m going to get, so I better just love it with all my might! It’s all about making the most of life, fixing up what needs to be fixed, and making it look more and more beautiful as time goes on (just like a perfect cupcake)! And that’s what I intend on doing!

The extent of my cupcake decorating to date. Practice makes perfect!