Cake decorating!!

Have I mentioned lately that I love cake decorating? Cause I do. Even with all the headaches my first cake gave me (have you heard me talking about "ugly cake"...yep, that's the one) the second one is turning out great and I'm really enjoying it.

This week was the first time we got to get hands-on with cakes and icing. I was so excited! All last week and this weekend were busy but I was thinking about all the possibilities for my cake. Devil's food, chocolate fudge, strawberry, yellow, white, or funfetti cake? I had picked them all up at Schnucks on Sunday cause they were only $1 so I had lots to choose from. I decided to go with two 9" round pans and cherry preserves for filling (remember she showed us how to do filling with a cup of pudding last class). Chocolate fudge for the cake. Chocolate icing...I thought I was all set. Then I got to Monday night and the actual baking/making of icing.

Ah, "ugly cake." You looked so great straight out of the cake pan...and then I tried to add the filling and things started to fall apart. Then I tried icing you...that just made it worse. Next thing I knew, one quadrant of the top of the cake had cracked off and was sliding across the cherry preserves filling and onto the cake board. Cherry filling was oozing out everywhere, even after I had put icing all around. I decided that slapping more icing on the cake would fix it. It did not. In fact, it made it even worse! (if that was possible) Now the top of the cake looks like a butt. Yes, you heard me right, it looks like a butt.

Poor Tom had to deal with me during this "crisis" of sorts. I was not exactly a happy camper. Granted this was all happening the night before class so I was in a bit of a time crunch and really wanted to have a nice first cake to decorate. I have never had this much trouble with a cake in my life...talk about frustration. Take a look for yourself...

The view from above...doesn't look too bad from up here.......

Then you get to see the side view. See the butt cheeks? And the filling oozing out everywhere? I bet you can tell where I tried to "glue" the cake back together with globs of icing too. *sigh*

Tom ensured me that "ugly cake" would still taste delicious but I didn't care. What good was a delicious cake when no one at decorating class was going to eat it...they were just going to see what a scary cake I had made and snicker. I was secretly praying that I was not the only one having a Monday night cake nightmare. Not nice, I know, and not that I would wish this on anyone, I just wanted some company to joke with on Tuesday really. Frankly, I was out of time cause it was too late to bake another cake that night.

Tuesday rolled around and I could NOT STOP THINKING ABOUT UGLY CAKE! I had to do something about it. I could NOT bring that cake to class. Lucky for me, I remembered that we had two options this week for class.

Option 1: Bring a round cake pre-iced and ready to decorate.

Option 2: Bring a character cake (made from any shaped pan) without icing to decorate.

I decided I could pull off option 2 if I could just get a cake pan and some eggs (I was now out of those...) So after work I ran to the store, got a teddy bear pan, got some eggs, and ran home to whip up another cake. This one looked MUCH better....mostly cause I didn't have to ice it. One leg did split open when it released from the pan but I figured I'd get Linda to help me repair that rather than attempt it on my own....we saw what happened to the last cake I tried to fix.

"Pretty cake," as I now call it, worked out great! Linda showed me how to fill in the cracked leg so no one would be able to tell and I was able to finish the main frosting color during class last night. I used a tri-tip star pattern. Take a peek!

"Pretty cake" in all it's current glory....more colors to come tonight!

So tonight I get to finish this bad boy up...and then try not to eat it. We'll just work on boosting "ugly cake's" moral tonight by telling it how good it tastes since I haven't been so nice the past two days...and my does it taste good! My husband is a lucky man...at least until the end of the month. ;)