The yardstick I like to use is: prep time should not exceed eating time. if it takes an hour to decorate a cake (figure a 10 serving cake) and only 5 minutes to eat, that’s too much time spent on looks alone.
I would gladly skip the cream and icing, and focus on the cake itself.
On the other end of the food chain, soup made from scratch will take about 20 minutes to make (figure the same 10 servings) will still take about 5 minutes to eat a serving, but the “potchke” time was mininmal.
Like many things, its the toichen vs. fluff battle. Toichen’s value is intrinsinc; fluff’s value is just that.