Martha Stewart Makes It Look Easy (I Assure You, It’s Not)
I can paint a cake. I’ve done it many times before—thick layers of buttery oil paint smoothed across the canvas like whipped icing. I use palette knives and brushstrokes the same way a baker might wield an offset spatula, carving out light and shadow on a surface that holds still and waits patiently.
I’ve had an affinity for cake since year one!
But put me in the kitchen with an actual cake? That’s where the frosting starts to crack. Literally.
My cakes usually taste great—moist, sweet, and made with love. But once it’s time to ice them, things fall apart. You’d think the motion would be the same: glide, swirl, sculpt. But unlike canvas, cake does not behave. It crumbles, it shifts, and it dares me to smooth out icing with any sense of control. Painting lets me push and pull the surface. Cake? Cake pushes back.
According to Martha Stewart, the authority on all things homemaking, the secret is to chill the cake first, trim the layers to be perfectly even, and apply a crumb coat before going in for the final swoop. She makes it look effortless, like she’s painting with sugar. I, on the other hand, usually go rogue with a warm knife and hope for the best.
While the look may be lacking, the inside tastes delicious! You might have to taste it to believe it.
As you can see from my attempts at icing these crumbly edibles, they’re not showstoppers. But they’re made with real butter and a lot of heart—and they taste better than they look. And maybe that’s the real art of it.
For now, I’ll keep my palette knives on canvas. And my frosting ambitions? Still under construction.
