Sadie's Snowman

Today, Sadie entered a cake in her school's cake decorating contest. I'm very proud of her.

She picked out the design from an ad for cookies that she found in the newspaper. She mixed up the cake batter. And she decorated the cake herself.

Now, to help her along so that she could do so much by herself, I baked a practice cake, and we figured everything out beforehand. I am including some pics, because I think Sadie did a marvelous job, and because I am especially happy with the way the Twizzler scarf turned out (perfect ends for fringing!).

The cake is Devil's Food with vanilla frosting. The ear muffs are chocolate chip cookies with blue frosting and a Twizzler band. The eyes are half Oreo cookies. The nose is a triangle baked out of cinnamon roll dough (thanks, Pillsbury!) and then covered with orange frosting. The mouth is a series of raisins. And the scarf was formed from the inspired use of more Twizzlers.

Snowman Brothers (Mine on the Left; Sadie's on the Right)

Sadie's Snowman

I saw some of the other cakes entered into the contest, and I cannot help but think that, in their processes of creation, there was more than the "minimal parental involvement" requested on the entry form. Isn't that the way it goes on school projects, though? We parents are a competitive lot. I told Sadie this morning that, whether she wins a prize or not, she did a great job and can take great pleasure in the fact that she did almost all of it by herself (including the awesome Twizzler scarf fringing effect).

(Apologies for the state of our kitchen floor, by the way. We're having them redone, and the whole house is a wreck.)