the hollidays everyday: Belated Birthday Pictures: The Cake Smash

I had never heard of a cake smash until I was a very grown adult. Okay, it was like three years ago. As a kid, it just wasn't part of our culture to smash a cake. My mother would have said, "What a waste of a perfectly good cake!" Well, she more likely would have said, "It's too messy! Let's just eat fruit!"

But I love the idea of a baby being able to just dig their hands into a cake and get messy. They are so tactile that it seems like the.best.birthday.event.ever. for a one year old. That being said, I try to avoid feeding Ella processed sugar. Plus, she just doesn't have a sweet tooth (total father's daughter thing going on here). So I brilliantly decided I would bake her a small cake that was low in sugar so she could smash and eat and have a grand ol' time. Well, I ended up getting a cake mix from Whole Foods that allowed you to add your own sugar and was gluten-free (not that Ella is allergic to gluten, but it just sounds healthier, doesn't it?). Remember now, that I was in my early stages of pregnancy and definitely feeling the symptoms so I was exhausted by the time I had to bake this cake. Let's just say it didn't turn out as planned. The thing was super dense. Like, I-could-throw-it-at-a-pug-and-knock-him-out kind of dense. But I frosted it anyway and hoped no one would notice.

Ella noticed. We all noticed. There was no smash. The poor girl couldn't break through it. She just swirled the frosting around a lot. I had to take a knife and break it up for her, only to realize the inside was uncooked. Total first smash cake fail. But she had fun nonetheless and managed to get frosting everywhere. It was a learning experience for all of us. For the next kid? Totally using angel food cake.