Betty Crocker is the Devil.

Did you know that Betty Crocker Kitchens has a YouTube Channel? With Betty Crocker chefs detailing how easy it is to create this:

Pffft - what, you won't make this for your little princess?

Or this:

This is so easy, kids will never know you nearly stuck your head in the oven!

Or this:

Just Kidding. This is from a bakery. Photo lifted from http://indienutjelly.com

While I appreciate that Betty wants to make us all look like SuperMom, I kind of want to burn her kitchen down. In part, because my son has discovered the site.

He’s four. And while one would thank that an illiterate 4-year-old couldn’t do much damage online, I beg to differ. Both the $253.49. Amazon shopping spree and memorized song lyrics that include “once got busy in a Burger King bathroom” prove otherwise.

Quinn now wants to bake these cakes. And I can bake. Really well. But if it takes me more than 10 minutes to decorate, it isn’t happening.

I’m busy.

And I don’t have that freaky magic oven that Betty has. When she opens her oven to slide one tray in to bake, it magically gives her a finished one. Boom. Instant cake.

My kitchen doesn’t work like that. When I open my oven, I make a mental note to buy some Oven-Off.

 
As a matter of  fact, her whole damn kitchen is magical. She has frosting that is already tinted and loaded perfectly into cute little pastry bags, and impeccably organized cups of candy – every type you can think of. Her ice cream cones are never a shattered mess, like mine always seem to be, and I have yet to see her bend a spoon trying to scoop ice cream.

Sure, the top two cakes are less than you’d expect from the bakery the third picture came from. But for a home cook, they’re pretty impressive.

And I’m not doing it. I’m just going to make a regular old cake. If I get fancy, I’ll frost it.

One point in my favor is that mine is 100% from scratch, right down to cracking the #@%^ing coconuts I need to make my husband’s annual pain in my ass birthday cake.

Sorry. I really hate making that cake.

But now, because of Betty, Quinn isn’t happy with a regular old cake. Not even a frosted one.

Because I’m not doing it right. I just slap on the frosting with the cake still in the pan. If it’s not a special occasion I am not breaking out a cake pedestal.

“But Mama, you need a crumb coat!”

What? What?

Don’t get me wrong, I know exactly what a crumb coat is. But I’m certain those words have never crossed my lips.

What’s a crumb coat, Buddy?

“A thin layer of frosting you spread over a cake to trap any crumbs so they don’t show up on the final layer.”

What?

He’s channeling Betty Crocker.

OH MY GOD HE’S POSSESSED!!!!

Betty Crocker is the devil, and she has my son.