This is the story of the Cake of Doom. It's a reply to Lin's kind comment in my last post, 'What do you do poorly?'. Cake decorating Lin, it's cake decorating. And when I popped over to her blog, I found a gorgeous lamb cake, a delightful confection that I could only dream of creating. Here is my public shame. Because I'm not completely perfect.
Last time I stayed with Joe, there was a birthday and so there was to be a birthday cake. I don't often cook plain sponge cakes, but I found a recipe and made two acceptable square layers. They were nice and neat and tidy. I used an entire pot of Betty Crocker vanilla icing to sandwich them together, which may have been a bit too much. Then I decided to cut the edges off, to neaten the sides up. As you can see, this didn't happen and the results were raggedy, to say the least. At this point, I poured a large glass of wine to steady my nerves.
I then tried to rescue matters by slathering it in apricot jam...
...and trying to stick the trimmings back on. Of course, it was pretty difficult to find their points of origin, so it was all rather haphazard. But it held together, with a bit of firm squidging.
There was no way on this planet that I was going to make my own fondant icing, so I had bought a lump of ready-made. At this point, I should have taken the cake off the crumby paper, but at the time, I was beyond reason as I had a gut feeling it was going to end badly. Did I mention that I hate cake decorating?
I managed to get the icing rolled out and onto the cake, without major mishap, apart from the inevitable crumbs sticking to it. I hadn't bargained for corner flaps and had to do some quick Googling to find a solution. Which was basically to cut them off. By now I was frazzled, so I bunged it all in a tupperware tub and came back to it the next day.
It seemed ok in the morning, as most things do. The icing was holding the lumpy trimmings in, though it wasn't the pristine snow-smooth surface I had hoped for. Clean paper underneath helped. But the worst part was yet to come. Joe had requested a 'KISS' cake, with cut-out images of every single band member. His favourite band. To be rendered in black icing, from his own artworks, with each image resized to a 10cm square. That's less than 4 inches.
I'm afraid that's where this sorry saga ends, as I DID try thinly rolling out ready-made black icing. I DID get a sharp knife and endeavour to cut out tracings of the boys. But when I picked my first (and last) effort up, it was warm and soggy and fell apart in my hands. I dumped the mess on the kitchen side, took a deep breath and walked away. So it was a big birthday cake fail on my part, and to be honest, the cake itself was sickly beyond belief with all that fondant icing and buttercream. We have agreed that next year, we'll make alternative arrangements.
9 comments:
Gretel, I laughed like a drain at this! Not out of derision but because I empathise so much. Two years running I struggled in a very similar fashion to make a Tardis cake for Stacie. Neither attempt ended well. This year I bought a Minion cake from Morrisons and saved a lot of grief. These people that can produce works of art from icing and sugar deserve respect!
Gretel, I laughed like a drain at this! Not out of derision but because I empathise so much. Two years running I struggled in a very similar fashion to make a Tardis cake for Stacie. Neither attempt ended well. This year I bought a Minion cake from Morrisons and saved a lot of grief. These people that can produce works of art from icing and sugar deserve respect!
You made a valiant effort on this project, which is more than what most others would have done. Frankly, I've come to the conclusion (after repeated disasters trying to sew my own clothes, as it happens) that if I don't do it well, I derive no joy from it and I can get someone else to do it for me, I'd rather drop it and pursue something else.
So you don't make designer cakes. You're a fantastic artist and needle-felter, you make a mean fruitcake, you write expressively and with passion, and you're a true and loyal friend. Let someone else be the cake boss.
That's about how my baking efforts would go. I see wonderful things being baked on other blogs, but it's not happening here.
You have my sympathy and understanding.
Cake decorating is scary and definitely bad for the blood-pressure! Marzipan, chocolate or cream cover a multitude of mistakes in my case.
I too laughed like a drain. It reminded me of the request for Mavis the diesel. Also black icing....she sagged a bit and wouldn't have made it out the shed let alone onto sodor. The following year I let my mother in law do the cake.
The magical art of 'birthday cakes'! I think your cake looked fine, such a shame the black icing beat you in the end. I have beautiful birthday cake creations in my head!!! Unfortunately as they become real life creations something is lost in translation. Sarah
What I absolutely love about this post is your dogged determination not to be defeated by a bit of sponge! In the battle of woman v cake, you win :)
This reminds me of when my OH and I first lived together - the first christmas, I happily made a christmas cake and you'd have needed a hammer and chisel to get through the royal icing!
I enrolled in a cake decorating course shortly afterwards......
(If you do fancy doing something similar to the design above ever again, google flooded royal icing - it would work really well, and is much simpler than it sounds)
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