Mud pie love

When I was young I was always outside playing in the sprinkler, riding my bike, and baking. I was a master chef naturally; always coming up with new and innovative recipes, mud pies were my specialty and were a very common sight in around my house. I remember one day specifically I was probably five or so and I had been out in the front yard baking all afternoon, it was summertime and the sun was warm on my back. I can only assume I was wearing some of my brothers old hand me down clothes with a dreadful mushroom haircut looking like a boy. 

My mother would give me old aluminum pie plates and I would find the remaining ingredients in the yard. I had an old steel bucket and would scoop up dirt from the garden and mix it with hose water. I remember being so curious as to what the little white dots were that would float to the surface in my bucket? I found out later in life that they are Styrofoam fragments that help aerate the soil, who knew! After mixing for quite sometime and being satisfied with the consistency of the mud I would transfer it to the pie plates, using non other than my hands of course. At that point the mud was too runny so it had to “pre bake” in the sun, after that point they were ready to garnish. I would collect berries from various neighboring trees, flowers, twigs, and small branches from my yard and would arrange them on the top of my pies, sometimes adding small pebbles for additional flavor. At this point they were ready for the oven! I would put them on the edge of my front porch and there they would sit until crusty and hard from the sun. I could never make just one pie I always made at least two or three, this allowed me to alternate between mixing, collecting, decorating and gave me something to do while the pies were baking.  During the summer this kept me occupied for hours, I don’t remember getting bored or wanting to do something else I was a happy little baker. Playing in the mud all afternoon would often result in me getting sprayed down with freezing cold hose water in order to keep the house clean. 

Till this day I am still very passionate about baking. Having taken a number of cake decorating classes in my free time I jumped at the chance to decorate a cake in my high school culinary class. I got carried away with my project and spent hours before school and during my lunch hour and finally finished it!

 This is a synthetic cake base (it's not real cake) covered with white fondant and decorated with buttercream icing, the skulls are also sculpted from fondant and painted with food coloring. I’m sure if I had a picture of one of my childhood mud pies this would be quite the improvement. Ever since I can remember I have had a love for food, cooking and more specifically baking, I hope that one day I will be able to pursue my love of baking and open my own bakery.