To frost or not to frost

My attitude to cake is undergoing an insidious, not-so-subtle, and possibly permanent change.

When I first started to bake regularly, about a couple of years ago, once Ani got old enough to get excited by it, I was all for low-fat, low-sugar versions. I would assiduously study lipid profiles of various oils and butters, check out glycemic indices of various sweeteners and experiment with whole-wheat, instead of all-purpose, flour and so on.

And I would never make frosting.

Have you ever tried making frosting? It's very easy: take a gazillion pounds of the fattiest substance you can find, and add a gazillion kilograms of powdered sugar (if you don't have confectioners'.. in which case, add some corn starch to the mix). Beat the heck out of it and voila! It's a living, breathing, sinfully tempting nightmare to anyone in the least bit artery-diameter-conscious.

My healthy, virtuously naked cakes had varying degrees of success- sometimes spectacularly amazing (did you know that you can replace butter/oil and eggs altogether with whole milk yogurt? or a ripe avocado?); at other times, not for the faint-hearted (have you ever tried adding millet flour, or ragi, as it is known in India, to cookies or cakes? Unless you have a penchant for chipped teeth, don't add millet flour ever to anything that needs to be baked).

In the past few months though, my craving for frosting has drastically increased (as has my waist-line). Maybe I'm falling sick? Maybe I'm secretly stressed out? Maybe my insulin levels are out of whack? Can I excuse myself on grounds of being merely human?

I used to cheat: I would make frost-free cakes at home, but sneak in a decadent frosting-covered delight for lunch from the cafeteria. Then, my slide towards cake-perfidy accelerated: I have started making frosting up my cakes at home: chocolate ganache, buttercream, strawberry cream! Yum!

Much to my amazement, Ani doesn't like it. He always gobbles up the frosting when we buy cake outside, but he absolutely will not eat whatever I make at home. He insists that it is not healthy. I pause momentarily out of shame.

At least Ani's admonitions have the effect of making me think twice about making off some insane kingdom of frosting, as I wish I could sometimes.