To Tiffany from Mike

Helllooo

Channeling my Mrs Doubtfire here. I felt I needed to do everything I could to gain a competitive advantage in baking and designing a Christmas cake so that I could suitably honor my service recipient. I needed mad baking skills. Therefore this:

And this. This recipe calls for egg whites. Don’t worry, I washed my hands thoroughly.

I should have kept my hoot (ers) on. This was the hard part and I needed to draw inspiration from somewhere. 

Shazam. Sprinkling candy cane particles for added effect.

Do you know how hard it is to do the “R” in Christmas? Really hard. But hey, nothing wrong with spelling CHRISTMAS, CH8ISTMAS

Tara pointing out my incredible artistic talent, what a beautiful wavy line symbolizing how arbitrary our decisions in life can be, also known as the Artist formerly known as Prince.

Lucky recipients. My Home Ministry Family. See how delighted they are. They have never seen anything like this, well, maybe at the Pompidou in Paris.

After completing my service, I can say, I nailed it (inside joke for my recipient—trust me, it is funny). And my French has improved beaucoup as it usually does when your baking skills increase. Je suis tres bon boulanger. Mon gateaux est tres magnifique. (although I am not sure if cake is masculine or feminine). Kriss and Ed can let you know.

True story, I watched my first episode of "Nailed It" yesterday. I walked in on my 3 daughters watching this show. It is a baking competition where they pit 3 contestants against each other. Each of these contestants has various levels of competence when it comes to baking (now you know the reference for the inside joke above). In this episode, they tried to imitate a French baker’s artistic cakes and failed dramatically. I mean, they were not even close. Definitely cringe worthy. But here's the thing. Having tried to bake and decorate a cake for my HM family a few weeks ago, I can tell you that baking and creating an art piece is really very difficult. Tiffany has an excellent talent for this. She is a baker extraordinaire. And from what I hear, it is mainly self taught. She has taught herself well enough that she can sell these creations. That is pretty impressive. I see myself as one of the competitors and Tiffany as the French Chef. As I have gotten to know Tiffany a little better over the last several months, I recognize her as very talented woman. And it has been fun to see our kids get together over the last little bit. 

In addition to baking the cake, I also made dinner (no, not frozen pizza or fast food). I actually made a full meal. I know Tiffany works hard as a mother so I served my wife by letting her take the night off and once again, nailed it!