Confession

You guys, I have a confession.

I bake cakes.

Sugar- and fat-laden, buttercream-topped cakes. I even have a whole other blog to write about the cakes I bake.

I am well aware of the hypocrisy of simultaneously maintaining a fitness/nutrition blog and a cake blog. It's just...not right. But long before I was interested in eating healthy, I was interested in eating cake.

A few years ago I took a cake decorating class with a friend, and discovered that I liked decorating cakes, and also that I was pretty good at it. Zach works at a school where there is always some reason to celebrate with cake, so for awhile I had a pretty nice cake business going. And when I didn't have any official business, I'd make about a cake a month and send it up with him just to keep my decorating skills sharp.

But after awhile, I started to feel guilty. Sending these cakes up to school was definitely making me part of the problem.

Let's not even talk about the cake -- the icing is astounding in its unhealthiness. I mean, take a look at the base:

That's straight-up Crisco, butter, and cream cheese. An unholy trifecta of artery-clogging goodness. Just mix that up with four cups of powdered sugar and you've got yourself some icing. And that's just to frost the cake! I make another half batch of decorator icing (pure Crisco and two more cups of sugar) to make the cake look pretty.

Here's the cake that sparked this post. Made it last night.

I don't mean to ruin cake for everyone, and don't actually think I can. I know exactly what goes into these cakes, and you know I'm still in there licking the beaters. But I sure do feel guilty about it! Maybe all this Beachbody, P90X-ing stuff is just my way of absolving my cake sins.

For now, I'm not giving up the cake decorating or the exercising. However, I will resolve not to make a cake unless it's for a very special occasion (and "Friday" does not count).