A Beautiful Cake Catastrophe

A few friends and I decided to take the Wilton Cake Decorating Basics Course thinking it would be a fun time to hang out and learn something new. Hmm…mostly! It was a bit more stressful than we had anticipated. The first evening was easy, listening mostly. The second evening, however, was fast paced and there was frosting EVERYWHERE! I found myself somewhat glad I had accidently schedule a flight that conflicted with the 3rd class.

So, when the fourth and final class was approaching, I was a bit nervous about how it was going to pan out. Allow me to share the catastrophe that was my cake! It’s really a hilarious comedy of errors.

Keep in mind…I had just returned home from my LA trip Tuesday afternoon, it is now Thursday and Wednesday was spent catching up on laundry and grocery shopping. So – I had to make and frost a cake, as well as prepare 3 batches of frosting and color them, AND gather all my supplies to haul to class (everyone jokes you might as well bring a suitcase, it’s nearly true).

Catastrophe #1: I used too much water in my first batch of frosting…so now I get to make a total of 4 batches, or work on trying to thicken it up, one of the two.

Catastrophe #2: My cakes did not “fall” out of the pan as the Wilton Cake Release claims it will (although I believe this was user error – I just don’t think I used enough). So, as you can see below…half of each cake was left stuck in the pan.

It was at this point I felt like giving up, but I really wanted to complete the cake so that I’d have a gorgeous birthday cake for my mom. So, I decided to use half of each cake to put them together to make one “complete” cake. Here comes…..

Catastrophe #3: When I went to put the two cakes together, I realized my two cake pans were two different sizes. So there was an inch overhang of the top layer! This is when I literally began laughing out loud. I thought to myself…"Seriously?!”

Catastrophe #4: I needed a filling since I was putting to cake layers together. My oh-so-handy chef friend gave me a recipe for which I already had all the ingredients! A peanut butter mousse. Yum! I’m chatting with her while I mix it up and as I’m spreading it onto the cake – I glance over and see one of the ingredients sitting out on the counter. That’s right, it never made it in. Oh well!

Catastrophe #5: In an attempt to accomplish this task, my child ran a muck in the kitchen! I am very humbly showing you the pictures of what a crazy mess both my kitchen and my child were. After tearing apart all the cupboards in the kitchen, I plopped him in a high chair to eat applesauce all by his lonesome. What a fun mess!

So…in spite of all this catastrophe? Look at how gorgeous the cake turned out:

Of course, the life of this cake HAD to end with one final catastrophe:

Catastrophe #6: When considering cutting into the cake to celebrate my mom’s birthday, I realized I had not refrigerated said cake (my fridge was full of food for the 4th) because the frosting does not need to be refrigerated. No biggie, right? Well…the cream based filling probably did need to be refrigerated. So, in the trash it went! Ahh…live and learn my friends. What a hilarious cake story!