'Nailed It!' challenge gives new meaning to the words 'Sinfully Sweet'

It all started with an addiction to a Netflix baking show.  

My kids had binge-watched Nailed It!, a program dedicated to watching amateur bakers attempt — and often fail — to create complicated cakes. They begged me to make our own fancy cake, perhaps not one of President Donald Trump, but maybe a multi-tiered shark or bubbling volcano?

My heart sank. I do love to bake, but when I try to decorate, it ends up looking like a sad melting clown face.

I decided to enlist Eryn Smith, Regina-based cake artist and co-owner of Sinfully Sweet, to learn what goes into making treats as visual as they are edible. She's made some elaborate creations over the years including a 3D dragon, a cake brain that oozed blood in the form of red caramel and a cake made to look like a tree with a cake axe embedded in it.

An afternoon at the bakery turned out to be a sweet spoonful of medicine for the soul, full of laughter and light-hearted — sometimes X-rated — banter.   

Smith has been making cakes for more than a decade. Based on her experiences, she suggested we try making a geode cake, a technique popular on Pinterest but relatively easy to master.

With a deft touch, she made applying icing look effortless. My efforts, on the other hand, made me think of that same sad melting clown face. Um, nailed it?

At this point, I thought Smith's probably wondered what she had gotten herself into. But she didn't miss a beat.

"Icing fixes everything," she said, handing me back the pipette bag. It's a phrase I learned to repeat over the next couple hours.  

The icing turned out to be the most complicated part of the cake-making experience. Rolling fondant, making the cut and loading it with rock crystals to simulate the interior of a geode was much easier in comparison.

I was pretty pleased with the results until Natasha Salter, co-owner of Sinfully Sweet, walked by. She cocked an eyebrow and suggested the way we cut the cake may have been questionable. She seemed to think we may have been channeling a not-so PG-13 cake, called the vageode, that unintentionally went viral. We both looked again. Hmm.  

I've always wondered about how bakers can take such painstaking measures when they know their work will be demolished within minutes. That doesn't seem to bother Smith, as long as she doesn't have to cut her creation herself.

What's more important to her is that reaction she gets when people see their cakes for the first time, their eyes filling with tears or their exclamation of, "That's beautiful!" fleeting but delectable, the explosions of delight like tiny grains of sugar dissolving on your tongue.

"I like making people happy," she said with a smile and a shrug.

It soon became clear to me what Smith meant.

When I brought the cake to the office, everyone seemed to light up. They expressed delight with the cake, oohing as they took a bite. It was nearly gone within minutes.  

At the end of the night, I offered the final slice to the gentleman emptying the trash and tidying up, the last person in the office. He looked me in the eye, gave me a bright smile and offered a simple thanks that somehow felt like the most genuine exchange I'd had all day.

Maybe icing doesn't quite fix everything. But without a doubt, my cake creation added a delectable sweetness to my day that felt anything but sinful.