So you may have heard that I like to cook and I like to bake, and I often infuse one passion with another. A few years ago I replicated the Golden Globes menu for my own viewing party. One Oscars night I featured cocktails inspired by the best picture nominees. And I often decorate cakes on a movie theme. My favourite among them was probably the Up cake, where the cake itself was the house, and a mess of colourful cupcakes hovered over top like the most fluffy and delicious balloons ever. My sister only kinda sorta got the reference. But her son speaks my language. Last year he had two parties, one for his friends, which featured a Batman cake made by his bakiest aunt, and one for his family, where we ate a Mickey Mouse cake, it being his favourite character in the universe, really, and the celebrity he most looked forward to meeting when we were recently in Disney World.

As if missing a week of school for a dream vacation to Disney isn’t enough for a kid, we were there for Jack’s birthday, and I felt that this kid needed and deserved a Mickey cake like no other. Now, Disney is great at celebrating birthdays. We started the day at Chef Mickey’s, where the mouse himself brought Jack a cupcake with Mickey’s face right on it. Breakfast, mind you. And then we had dinner at the Beauty and the Beast restaurant, Be Our Guest, where the beast also offered up a birthday sweet treat. But the best was yet to come, because earlier Sean and I had snuck away to take a cake decorating class with Disney Spring’s most beloved patisserie, Amorette’s.

Sean was not much of a cook before he met me but I believe he genuinely loves being in the kitchen when I’m cooking, and he’s a pretty good sous-chef. He’s slow and self-doubting, but if my directions are good, so is his follow-through, and we love spending time together, and feeding people, and pouring our love into baked creations we’re happy to present to our loved ones. When we were in Paris we took a couple of classes together, one to learn to make authentic macarons, and another to make a 3-course meal that included potatoes that were legit more cream than potato. Anyway, all that to say that I count myself lucky that Sean was willing to lose a few hours at a theme park in order to don an apron and learn about glaçage. Was there day drinking involved? Of course there was. We made a beautiful Mickey Mouse cake for our nephew and brought home some new skills and knowledge, which is an awesome kind of souvenir.

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