Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Cake Wreck

At this point, you might be wondering why, after so many successful recipes, I decided to call this blog The Recipe For Disaster.  Wonder no more.

Remember this?

How it was so pretty, and white, and WHOLE?

This past week, I decided to make the snowflake cake for a coworker’s goodbye party. The cakes, a cinch. The frosting? Not so much.

I started out by making the pudding frosting as before. This time, though, it didn’t set well – I think I overbeat the Cool Whip and it lost its consistency.  After putting some in between the two cakes for the middle layer, I was wary of putting it on the top and sides of the cake, for fear that it would all slide off.  I tried adding more pudding mix – no go.  After much cursing and hair-wringing, I decided to just make a regular vanilla buttercream icing using butter and confectioner’s sugar.

I iced the cake on the top and sides, and breathed a sigh of relief.  The cake looked perfect.

And then.

AND THEN.

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A giant seismic cakequake caused the entire top layer to break in two and slide to opposite sides of the plate.

COMMENCE FULL ON PANIC. I tried to reposition the two halves and fill in the gap with more frosting so that it might stick together.  It almost worked, until the two halves had a fight and decided to split up.

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By now, hysteria had set in.  It was almost midnight, and this cake was supposed to be eaten for a work function in a mere 12 hours.  Eric was extremely supportive, exclaiming how it was fine, NO ONE WOULD NOTICE, and I should bring it in as is. HAHAHAHA. How cute.

Accepting defeat, I decided that the ultimate solution lay in the above average bakery at my local ShopRite.  Not wanting all my hard work to go to waste, I decorated the “cake” with the raspberries and white chocolate snowflakes I had on standby.

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This caused Eric to gleefully state that I should mess up cakes all the time, because then we get to eat the mistakes! And in truth, he’s right – despite looking like a raspberry volcano, this was just as delicious as the first successful version.

So, in closing, always remember when reading this humble blog to pay heed to the subtitle – “Results may vary".  Things might fall apart, but at least they’ll (almost) always taste good!

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