I try to teach optimism to my kids. I’ve always felt that teaching children the benefits of a positive attitude is a vital lesson which will benefit them the rest of their lives. I tell them, “Each day when you wake up, you have a choice. You can have a good day or you can have a bad day, so you might as well have a good one.” Even at their young ages, they know there is always a brighter side – even if they need help finding it sometimes. They know, above all things, that happiness is a choice. It is not something that comes to you but something you have to reach out and claim each day

But sometimes its just not that easy. Sometimes the stresses of the world seem to bear down on us with concentrated force as our minds fill with to do lists and missed appointments, lost papers or rapidly growing laundry. Sometimes our days just feel overwhelming and all we want to do is press the pause button and sit for five minutes, with a blank mind. I think mothers are especially prone to this, being the emotional thinkers that we are. We love and therefore we do, but we love so much more than we are capable of doing.

Yesterday I had a great idea for a tutorial involving a cake. A chocolate velvet cake, to be exact. Jazzed over bringing this to Southern Plate, I made the cake, taking photos of every step, then set up a little backdrop and put my camera on a tripod so I could get detailed photos of how I was going to decorate it.

My beautiful Katy was so excited about the prospect of cake that she was just about beside herself. My Brady moved his homework operations to the dining room table, where I was decorating, just to be closer and to watch me.

As I began taking photos, Katy watched the back of the camera to see them appear on the digital screen. She saw my hands in the photos and seeing as how she had recently had her fingernails painted, she wanted her hands in the photos, too. Several photos later I finally got through that I really needed photos of the cake and not her hands, so my readers could see what I was doing. She frowned but complied and little hands stopped appearing in front of my lens in every shot.

That was when Brady started needing help with this homework…and while I was working on that the smell of cream cheese icing proved too persuasive for my Katy and little fingers began dipping into the side of the cake. Around about this time, Katy climbed up in a chair to get a better view and as I stopped her from almost falling out of the chair , I dropped a huge glob of icing right on the carpet. To say I was frazzled would be putting it mildly.

Here I was trying to do a tutorial which I felt was very important, but all my kids wanted was my attention – and my cake. I took the rest of the icing and simply iced the cake, paying no mind to the appearance as I had planned. Then I cut two large slices and placed them in bowls which I gave to each of my younguns. The tension in the room dissipated immediately. My kids were absolutely delighted with their bounty and for the duration of their eating each one of them kept singing my praises “Ma, you make the BEST cake!” “This cake is wonderful!” “Mama, I really really like your cake!”

I guess in the end, they kids will likely not remember how the cake looked, but they will remember that you made it for them. And whether its made from scratch or made from a mix, whether its chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry, I think when all kids grow up they will agree, their mama made the BEST cake.

Sometimes we just need to remember to stop fussing so much over how the cake looks and just let the kids have some.

I suppose y’all would like to know a bit about this cake! This is my WOW cake among my girlfriends. They always want it whenever we have a cake eating occasion. It has served as a birthday cake more times than I could possibly count, it was even a baby shower cake once!

Get little hands out of the chocolate chips….but let them have the ones they already got coz they are so darn cute and they just really wanted chocolate. We understand a girls need for chocolate, after all

Pour in what is left of your chocolate chips . Eat one yourself, you deserve it.

And this will make it much more uniform and flat! You won’t always have to do this but some days, when you’re trying to make a cake and kids are just a chat chat chatting away, you’ll find yourself with a wompy cake layer and you’ll thank me for this little tip

SO, for the remainder of this tutorial you will see me making a double batch of icing, but the recipe I am giving you at the bottom of the page is for a single batch.

 Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.