Monday, June 13, 2011

Cake Recovery: Trials and Tribulations of an Incredibly Stupid Person

Soo..
The infamous cake after all the reconstruction...
Embarassing story time.

This past weekend was one of my best friend's birthdays. As part of her present, I wanted to make her a cake. I realize now how overly confident and stupid I was at the time. Don't get me wrong, I can make a mean cake, but I've never been the greatest, per say, at actually decorating a cake. Nearly every time I've made a cake, it has undergone some sort of emergency surgery before completion. Either a layer completely breaks, I don't wait for the damn thing to cool long enough (who has THAT much time on their hands?!), or I botch up the frosting by trying to go overboard with my decorating.

So when I (idiotically) decided I would use fondant on her cake for the first time in my life without reading up much on it beforehand.. well, you can see how easily things went wrong for me.



I didn't want to risk making my own fondant the first time. So I bought some from the store, rolled it out, and felt like I was using play-doh. Then when I put it on the cake, I virtually destroyed everything. My cake looked absolutely horrible. It was originally supposed to be two layers of absolute beauty as a dedication to my loyal friend. Instead it looked like.. well I don't even know. Like a horrible cake. Like the aftermath of a zombie apocalpyse had just gone down in my kitchen. Like I was being stabbed while I created the cake. Like.. you get the point.

Thus, I put it under "Absolute Cake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction" (what I like to call the cutting, frantically frosting, and virtually covering in sprinkles after I have screwed up a cake).

And in the end didn't turn out horrible. At least I thought it didn't. In fact, I was STILL going to give it to her later that day.
 So I gave myself a nice pat on the back and went to upload some of the cake photos onto my computer. While waiting for them to load, I checked facebook.

As it so happened to turn out, another girl going to my friend's party later had just posted a picture of a cake SHE made.

Um..

NO ONE told me she was basically a professional baker.

She had this cake decked out in all the works. Fondant, three tiers, unique candles, lettering, patterns, bright colors, amazing frosting skills, basically everything you could ever want out of a cake.

So I quietly covered my measely little thing in tin foil and put it back on the kitchen counter, right next to my crushed dignity.

I think I'll still give my cake to my friend, but at a private, non-embarassing time. She probably won't care that while I can cook, and while I thought I could bake, my cake skills are not fully developed yet. 

 The fact I was over-confident, if not a little bit haughty about my skills, was definitely a learning experience though.
Humiliation? Hell yes.

Thus, my lesson of the day: Don't go around flaunting your skills. It may turn out you don't actually have them and then rather than baking a cake being a piece of cake, it'll actually whip your ass like you're a tub of cool whip.


On the bright side, my Doors project turned out quite well, if i do say so myself. I'll put up a picture some other day. And lastly, here's another random picture I took/edited/messed with/wasted time working on instead of doing homework.





2 comments:

  1. Hi, Mia I always find your daily life experiences very entertaining to read and I can definitely relate to bad experiences in the kitchen. I'm not much of a cook and I have to trick my family into eating my dinners and even when I put ice cream in a bowl and serve it to them. Hell, I can't even bake cookies that you just stick in the oven. Lol, My family doesn't trust my cooking at all. Ha! I just laugh at them, but anyways I think you should have given your cake to your friend regardless of the professional bakers cake. I think your friend would have enjoyed your cake as much as the other one because it came from the heart. She would have greatly appreciated that.

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  2. Thank you for your comment, sorry I'm responding so late! I never did end up giving her the cake, and you're right.. I should have just given it to her :/ I think she would have appreciated it. Oh well, lesson learned. Hahaha, I'm sure you can make cookies from the pre-packaged stuff! Though, I've screwed that up before, too..

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