cakeapocalypse
Tomorrow is my sister's sister-in-law's daughter's first birthday party. (My niece-in-law?) Anyway, her mom asked me to make a cake, and I'd been looking for an excuse to make a topsy turvy cake for a while. I made the cake layers and stuck them in the freezer last week, made the fondant last night, and cleared my schedule today to assemble the cake. Everything went beautifully, in the beginning. I had some issues getting my fondant red enough, and the texture on that batch went wonky (I'm assuming from the amount of color I had to add), but I decided I could sell it as an intentional textural choice. It was leaning a bit, but it worked for the overall look. Did I mention it took like 6 hours?
So yeah, just as I'm patting myself on the back re: my awesomeness, disaster struck. The bottom layer started cracking a bit. The layers lost their sharp edges and smushed a bit, causing the fondant to tear, as you can start to see here. (It's redder in person; crappy cell phone pictures.)
Then, full on devastation. The side of the middle tier fell completely off. The first tier was intact, but the middle tier...
At this point, I sat down on the sofa and spent some time contemplating exactly what I had done to anger the baking gods. The cake should've been relatively sturdy -- I used dowels and cardboard -- but I guess the weight of the pound cake I used for the layers, in combination with the narrow base and high top of the tiers, was just too much. So I considered my options and then called my sister to come over and restore me to sanity. With her help, I decided to salvage the bottom tier and stick the undamaged top tier on that one -- we just used fondant balls and ribbon to hide the messy bits. It looks better than expected:
(Again, crappy cam work, but that top layer actually has defined edges in person. It looks like a big marshmallow here.)
So, yeah. That was my day. It sucked, and now I am recovering in the best way I know how.
So yeah, just as I'm patting myself on the back re: my awesomeness, disaster struck. The bottom layer started cracking a bit. The layers lost their sharp edges and smushed a bit, causing the fondant to tear, as you can start to see here. (It's redder in person; crappy cell phone pictures.)
Then, full on devastation. The side of the middle tier fell completely off. The first tier was intact, but the middle tier...
At this point, I sat down on the sofa and spent some time contemplating exactly what I had done to anger the baking gods. The cake should've been relatively sturdy -- I used dowels and cardboard -- but I guess the weight of the pound cake I used for the layers, in combination with the narrow base and high top of the tiers, was just too much. So I considered my options and then called my sister to come over and restore me to sanity. With her help, I decided to salvage the bottom tier and stick the undamaged top tier on that one -- we just used fondant balls and ribbon to hide the messy bits. It looks better than expected:
(Again, crappy cam work, but that top layer actually has defined edges in person. It looks like a big marshmallow here.)
So, yeah. That was my day. It sucked, and now I am recovering in the best way I know how.