Anybody else have those little bad habits that lead to cake disasters, but you just can't help yourself and do them anyway? Surely I'm not alone.

My big one is the icing dam. I make gooey, creamy fillings but never bother with an icing dam (usually I make my buttercream the day after I bake, fill, and refrigerate the cake). This will come back to haunt me someday I'm sure, but every single cake I make, I risk it anyway. I guess until I get bulging sides or a layer slides, I just won't learn.

The other - and I can't tell you why I do this - is measure ingredients right over the mixer bowl. I have added way too much baking powder, extract, or salt on more than one occasion, but I continue to measure over the darn bowl. I can't stop myself.

Well, I have learned my lesson about the dam. sometimes even with a dam my raspberry filling oozes out of the sides of the cake.

My bad habbit is fussing with the cake. Sometimes I just can't let it sit long enough. I have to keep working with it. I need to let my cakes set longer to let them settle.

Ahggg!

I dont' measure stuff over the mixer .... except I break the eggs into the batter/dough while the mixer is running. I've dug lots of egg shells out of my doughs/batters!! You'd think I'd learn!

levinea, i do those exact same things. my problem with a dam is I don't know how to make it. now that I have sugarshack's DVDs I know what it's supposed to look like and feel so *maybe* I'll start making it.

how bad am i!! i do all of the above!! well except that i only use thin ganache layers in my cakes so i don't need to dam them anyway -or maybe i just tell myself that!?!?!

Except for the dam since I don't use to manny fillings except BC. The rest, totally guilty. I measure of the bowl, don't wait long enough before I start fussing with the cake, and crack eggs directly into the batter/icing.

any tips on cracking eggs with out breaking them into small pieces....no I
don't break them into the mixer but even then I keep having shell pieces..

thank u Indydebi...!

I don't always know how I'm going to decorate a cake until the day it's due . My clients just tell me they want this flavor to feed this many people and this theme. Last Wednesday I had a cake due at 3:30. I iced it at 10 a.m., then stared at it - blankley , set it in the fridge, went outside to smoke, then I came up with a design. I had it decorated in fondant to look like a silver slot machine by 1. The clients loved it. I think they trust my "artist abilities" way too much .

I knew I wasn't alone!

Thanks for the cracking egg tip...I always crack on the side of the bowl. Sometimes I get shell fragments, sometimes not, but I'll crack it on the counter from now on.

Im OCD and ADD, LOL. I will nit pick at everything I do. I'm definately not at professional status, but I get so anal over everything about it. Like Sarahpierce, I do not know until the day of what I am doing. I will sketch out hundred different things. I will have a billion different ideas and start thinking of it months before a child or family members birthday. But even with the finished product, I think of other ideas or should of, could of ideas. Luckily I am just a family baker for the time being. They all know how I am and think everything I do is great. (Gotta love family support)

Helpful clean-up tip: Lay a piece of wax paper on the counter and crack the eggs on this. Any escaping egg "juice" will make a mess on the wax paper, which you can just wad up and throw away. Reduces egg contamination on your counter, too. If you crack directly on the counter, then you should wash and sanitize the counter before doing anything else.

I used to do the eggs right into the mixer even though I knew I shouldn't, but recently I've gotten a couple of bloody eggs and one that had a hard thing in it, it looked like a small oval-shaped piece of waxy/hard substance. It must have been some weird kind of calcification. Anyway, now I crack them into the measuring cup before I put them into the batter...Yuck...

You egg straight in the bowl people are very brave! Despite it being close to 30 years ago I still have the rule of my very strict 4th grade cooking teacher ingrained in my being. Always break eggs into a clean cup, just in case it is off. That way you won't ruin the whole cake should you come across a bad one. I have to add that in my entire baking career I have never come across a bad one, so the risk must be pretty small. Having said that I heard the other day about someone who broke an egg and a whole baby chicken came out, so I guess it does happen.

can someone explain when and why and how we let our cakes "settle"? I obviously have not been doing that, among other things listed

BakingGirl, i learned that lesson the hard way. and I had to throw away a whole batch of cake batter. So now I just crack one egg into the small bowl and do this for each egg.

I rush my leveling..I figure "ah, I will fix it with buttercream"

Although I don't get the people who put a fondant covered cake stacked and then put a level on it. How are they going to fix it? Recover the cake?