When I was in fifth grade, I took my first cake decorating class. My mom was quite the baker, so I had been decorating under her tutelage for a while, but fifth grade was my first formal class. Through the years, I would occasionally use my skills, but then while living in Utah before grad school, I decided to take another class. Since then, I’ve done very little decorating of cakes…that is until last weekend when I took on a serious challenge: a princess cake for my niece’s fourth birthday.

My sis-in-law asked me if I would do it a few weeks out and then sent me an instructional YouTube video (that my niece watched several times…her job was quality control and she was serious about it). I watched it once and then we just went for it. And here’s what the process looked like:

I feel pretty good about the whole thing. My favorite part, by far, was my niece repeating to me parts of the video verbatim because seriously, is there anything cuter than a new 4 year old saying things like, “put a nice dollop on the top and then you’ll want to take an offset spatula…” Adorable!