I am a proud Pinterest user. Everything I pin, I make. When I pin, I pin with purpose. So for my daughter’s first birthday, you could imagine how I excited I was to look up and pin ideas for a trendy smash cake session.
A little baby girl hugging her smash cake? Pin. Is that squeals of joy with cake all over another little girl’s face? Pin. What? Tossing the cake across the room and laughing? Adorable. Pin.
My daughter, Brynn, was definitely going to do all of these things. There was no room in my mind for the idea that she wasn’t. I even went a few steps further with my pinning. I was not going to fork over $50 for a cake that was going to be smashed to death.
The best buttercream frosting. Pin. How to frost rosettes on a cake. Pin. Background ideas for a smash cake photography session. Pin.
Well, I spent five hours baking and frosting the smash cake for my daughter’s photography session. And that “best” buttercream frosting? I put it in the fridge overnight and the frosting then became too hard. So in the morning, I rushed the grocery store and stocked up on butter and powdered sugar. You bet I re-frosted that cake the morning of her photo shoot.
Later that day, when my husband and I only received one decent photo from the photographer for the cake smash, I thought Pinterest lied. No, wait … all of these parents posting pictures of their smash cake-happy babies lied. Cake smashes are the absolute worst.
It never occurred to me that my daughter wouldn’t have done any of those things I had pinned. I mean, when my one-year-old eats pureed food, it ends up in the most unlikely places. Instead, our photography session left my daughter traumatized and in tears the entire time.
My daughter, Brynn, was probably thinking that we, the adults, were just weird. The photographer told us to “fake it” and smear her dress with frosting. When I did that, Brynn only cried harder. And the perfect smash cake I made? The photographer told us to just dump it on the floor so she could “throw it away.”
So, I’m calling smash cake scam!
Yup, cake smashes are time-consuming. Cake smashes are overrated. And the memories behind that one good photo are just a total lie.
Hey, I’m just the messenger, people.