Mmm cake

Yesterday, I made a cake for Valentine’s Day. It was an experience that is blog worthy.

I made the cake around 11:30 and it was done by noon. I managed that part just fine. I took kid 5 to therapy and then came back home. I waited until the kids got home from school and then covered a pizza pan with red wrapping paper to act as a tray. Then I realized the pan would be too small once the cake was decorated, and I also got chocolate from the filling all over it. So I found a lid from a storage tote and covered that with paper instead.

I had taken a square cake and then a round one and cut the round in half. When pieced on the sides of the square cake, it makes a heart. So I got the bottom layer of heart cake to the clean “board” and put the second layer on. The corner of one of the square cakes fell apart so I had to glue it with frosting. It was fine though because it was just for us and I covered it with fondant, later. Minor setback…

So after it froze with the crumb coating, I pulled it out and pulled the fondant out that I also made earlier. I worked it and worked it and it just wasn’t right. Too sticky. Too brittle. A mess.

I managed to get a white strip out of it and then 12 colored hearts. The rest of the batch took all of my red dye and still wasn’t the right color, and when I tried to pick it up to take it to the cake, it broke in chunks. I used the same fondant recipe as last time and it just wasn’t the same result. I tossed it in the trash and started over.

That’s when I realized I read the recipe wrong the first time.

I was going for a reddish pink since my red was gone but I got mauve. It looked like old gum last night but it is better after sitting.

I was out of steam and didn’t really try for my original goal for a cake that looked like a candy box. So I put the fondant over it, smoothed it, and stuck the hearts to the top. One broke and another wouldn’t fit so out of 12, I used 10.

Then I dyed some canned frosting pink and used it to do stars around the edge. They came out great. At least something went right.

I got my Wilton book today and it seems that I did all of lesson 1 yesterday without knowing it. On to lesson 2…