Cake Fail

Okay, okay, I keep talking about how poorly the birthday cake and cupcakes turned out. I am probably exaggerating and overreacting but the one thing that did not turn out the way I wanted and expected, OF COURSE is the one thing I am going to focus on.

I decided to buy all kinds of cake decorating tools and watch all kinds of cake decorating YouTube videos so that I could go ahead and start fulfilling my dream of being a cake decorator in my retirement. I mean really Duff and Buddy and the DC cupcake girls and the Cakedivas and ALL the rest make it look SO easy. Yeah. It's not. :( Apparently it takes more than watching some videos. The good news is that I think what it truly takes is practice. So there is time to perfect my skills before I retire.

The other good news is that I served cake pops which were a hit so I'm not it's not a total failure.

First I made a 6" mini smash cake for Everleigh. The cake was really yummy. I made a pumpkin cake from scratch. I had intended to make a healthy cake for her. I had intended for it to be more of a pumpkin bread kind of cake and I was going to make it with applesauce instead of oil, flax instead of eggs, and whole wheat flour instead of white all purpose. I had gathered a few recipes and somewhere in the bunch was this pumpkin cake recipe. I was planning this party for weeks. So when I actually went to bake her cake I was going through the recipes I'd gathered, grabbed this one, knew I had the ingredients and went to work. Basically, I totally forgot my plan to go healthy. At the end of the day, E ate less than one adult size piece of cake so it really and truly did not matter. And this pumpkin cake was yummy. I used canned cream cheese frosting because I don't make my own frosting. Although, in the future, I may.

I baked the cake in two 8" pans. It was my first shot at a layer cake. Once I had put the layers together, I cut around the circumference of the cake about an inch in. This left me with a 6 inch cake. I watched this one YouTube video over and over to learn how to get smooth frosting on a cake. I thought it turned out pretty good.

You can see the pieces I cut off in the background. Don't worry, they didn't go to waste!

And here is where it started to go horribly wrong for me. The frosting started melting. Immediately. It pooled around the bottom of the cake, ruining all the work and concentration I'd put into getting the sides smooth. Mind you, this was in August. The hottest August on record for the state of Texas. The high temperature on the day of her party was 106 and that was typical for the week/month/summer. But I was inside. My cake was inside. It's stays 75 and below inside. It's a head scratcher.

But I pressed on and stuck it in the fridge. Now for the decorations.

I made marshmallow fondant. It was my first time to do it and it was SO easy. I really enjoyed it. But, you are dealing with mounds of melted marshmallows which makes holding a camera while prepping the food impossible. So, no pics.

But, basically, you melt mini marshmallows in the microwave with a little water and then add powdered sugar until you get a play-doh consistency. And then it is oh so fun! I separated my mixture into 3 parts and colored each with food coloring. My final result was a little swirly and tie-dyish but I think that's because I did not knead the "dough" enough after adding the food color to thoroughly mix it in. But I liked the look. I cut flowers out with cookie cutters. I rolled a bunch of pink out and shaped it into a swirly E for the top.

Everything I read about marshmallow fondant said to NOT put the decorations on the cake until it is ready to be displayed. With my mess of a melty cake this was great advice so I stacked each flower and the E in a plastic container separated by parchment paper and stuck it in the fridge.

As far as the cupcakes go, I frosted them the night before and had the same turnout as the cake frosting. Totally melted away. I used white frosting that I dyed blue and orange with food coloring and I used pink strawberry frosting. Strangely, the strawberry held up pretty well and did not melt. I think maybe there was something defective about the white frosting. I was also extremely short on frosting. Once I ladled it into the pastry bag and squeezed it out in a cute little swirl, I only had enough for 5 or 6 cupcakes. And the swirl on the blue and orange disappeared right away. So cute swirls were a lost cause making for ugly cupcakes. :( I used a boxed funfetti cake mix for the cupcakes and they turned out terrible, I don't really know why but in addition to ugly cupcakes, they just didn't taste good. Total fail. I stuck the toppers in at the VERY last minute. They are scrapbook stickers that I stuck to toothpicks. It really helped with the overall look.

On the day of the party I randomly placed the flowers on and around the cake on the cake stand. I put the E on top and completed it with a glittery "1" candle.

The total presentation.

As the party started, my cake was out on display and the flowers on the side were already sliding off and melting away. It was put in the fridge. Below is what the cake looked like by the time we were ready to serve it and we sang Happy Birthday. Frosting melting everywhere.



But Everleigh loved it!

She even liked the marshmallow fondant:

So, clearly, it was not a TOTAL fail!