No Time to Bake a Cake When There’s Puke to Be Cleaned Up

With all the “free time” I’ve had lately (considering no new cake jobs), I thought I would put my itch to make a cake to good use.  Practice, Practice, Practice – right?!?  Since I am completely self taught, I figured it was time for some homework.  So, putting the new company name, Sweet Chemistry, to good use, I decided to do some experiments.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling that well, therefore not thinking clearly, and created too many variables and had no real experimental control.  Then both dogs and kids started to barf….  Chaos ensued.

Matt wanted a really “rich” cake, so we decided to go with dark chocolate mocha.  Of course I never made this before, and the cake turned out extra moist for some unknown reason.   (I must break out the chemistry textbook.)   Anyway, I decided to save time and make all of my cake layers the same day I decorated the cake.  Usually you would wait a day to allow any excess moisture and air to settle out of the cake, but at this point I felt like passing out, and the kids and the dog were getting sick.  Basically, I just wanted to get this over with.  This error in judgment, however, was the beginning of the end of my cake.

Everything that could go wrong did.  My homemade red fondant wouldn’t get red enough.  I had to go back out to the store to buy a second vial of dye.  My buttercream was a chocolate hazelnut (which tasted awesome!!) but was too runny, and my cakes were way too moist.  Of course I didn’t realize these were problems until after my cake started bulging in the middle.  I decided to continue anyway – after all, this was just a practice cake – but as I put the fondant on the first layer, it ripped.  I guess I over kneaded my fondant because of all the extra dye added.   I think I must have been loopy from the Lysol fumes from my “clean-up” duties, because none of this seemed to get to me.  I just kept going.  Normally I would have been like Buddy (Cake Boss) and thrown the cake across the room.

So I doweled and stacked my cakes without any hiccups, put on my deep purple ribbon, and stepped back.  Hideous!  I was hopeful that my scrollwork would cover the imperfections, so I started to make royal icing.  I didn’t realize that I didn’t have the right ingredients and had to do some “chemistry” research to find substitutions.  (Don't worry, I'm going to write a ”Cake Lingo For Dummies” blog, for the baking impaired.)  Considering I never did scrollwork before, and not having depth perception gave me a considerable handicap, but I guess it could have turned out worse?!?

Anyway, I wanted to start giving cake away, so we took off the top layer.  As we removed it, we noticed that the cake had settled so much that the dowels were exposed almost ¼” between layers.  Honestly, I haven’t even tried tasting it yet.  I haven’t exactly been in the mood after all the puking – as you can imagine.  I hope it as least TASTES good!

“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward” – Thomas Edison