I have one cake disaster on my counter and another waiting in my fridge. !!!! I have 2 birthday cakes tomorrow. 1 is strawberry with chocolate swirl and strawberry mousse filling. the other is chocolate/chocolate bc. I got the strawberry one assembled and base iced and into the fridge to decorate in the am. (mousse needs to be refrigerated.) I iced the chocolate cake and let it sit to set up so I could smooth it. I did some dishes and turned around to find a giant crack in the top of the cake! WTH! As I start looking closer, I can see 2 more under the icing. WHY! ARgh. I'm hoping it doesn't crack any more and I can fix it tomorrow. It's a recipe I've never done (no egg, no milk) recipe from the mom of the little boy with allergies. I have never had this happen!
so the 2nd potential disaster is the strawberry mousse. I'm seriously worried I won't get it decorated fast enough and the mousse will start sliding around in the middle KWIM? I just want to give up this weekend.

bad cakes are like bad hair days, they happen, so throw on a hat and press on! You can do it sweety(not sure the technicalities of how to do it), but you'll figure it out. Preserver

I'm thinking I'm going to have to do a little bit at a time on the mousse cake and keep popping it in and out of the fridge. How my friend will get it back to her parent's house for her little girl's party..I don't know. I'm thinking I will loan her a big cooler. :} Ahhhhhhh!!! The crack...well....as long as it doesn't fall apart, I can patch it and cover it will the design. Weirdness. it's REALLY muggy here too. I'm sure that doesn't help.

Yep - I know this is going to sound VERY weird, but maybe you can do a fix on the cracking cake by making a fondant "tape" around it. I guess I'm picturing big cracks in the cake, and the fondant might be strong enough to hold it up and together. I know weird...but good luck with whatever you do to get through this!

Could you freeze the mousse cake? I've never filled a cake with mousse so I don't know if it would work, but a frozen cake would stay solid enough for you to work on. It might also be nice to freeze it for the delivery, it could thaw on the way over but not melt. If it starts getting too slippery, could you put a couple of wooden skewers in? Then they could be taken out and birthday candles put where the holes were, just before serving.

To patch a cracked cake, I just squirt some frosting in. So far it's always held together well enough.

Bad cake days happen to us all It's just a sign that you're a good baker, that you bake often enough to even have a bad cake day.