Ok - I'm not a pro or even a wanna be I haven't even sold a cake yet. I'm only tinkering and looking toward one day maybe selling a cake or 2. I've put 2 up for donation to a fund raiser but that's it...

*sigh* so. My husband's Birthday was last week, on Tuesday. I did a cake for my aunt thursday, one for my parents on sunday, and by Tuesday was too tired and didn't have time or a way to hide a cake from him. The 2 for my parents and aunt were basic no frills cakes. I wanted to do something special for my husband, as he's watched and or helped me do some of them. But given the time and inability to hide hours of work from him (we both work full time) i opted to make a Giant choc chip cookie and my 3 yr old daughter 'wrote' on it with Icing. We had a candle and everything, and I was able to whip it together in an hour and half after I got home (left work a little early) it was hot out of the oven, barely drizzled with icing when he walked in the door.


Fast forward to Thursday. I get a call from my Mother in law, who says we are having a family gathering on saturday for DH's 40th B-day.. DH says he knows nothing about it, until MIL mentions she was going to come over ON his birthday but he said he'd rather do it on the weekend.

So. Foolishly, I think I can figure out a way to whip something special up friday night and saturday - figuring I can get 6 hours in there somehow..

So a couple of hours looking up ideas and deciding on a 'yoda' 3-d cake as he love star wars. I make up a family emergency to sneak out of the house Friday morning to go to my moms, and work for 4 hours on making modeling chocolate and baking the cakes.

Saturday I say I'm sneaking away to check on my mom(the aforementioned family emergency) while our 3 yr old is napping... the family dinner is going to be at 5 so I think 3 hours should cover the assembly.

I KNOW better. I mean, I haven't been doing this more than a few months, and only have done a handful of projects, but after researching the heck out of issues people have, and seeing disasters, I KNEW better.

I couldn't find the recipe I used before for the modeling chocolate, and with the heat/humidity, the 4 batches I made came out something like pizza dough WAY too soft. I tried to rescue them by adding more melted candy melts - but it was hopeless. Then I made the BC too thin. The head looked - eh - well - for a rush job I give it a 4-5 on a scale of 10- RKT covered in the soft candy clay. the ears were HOPELESS, drooping..

Then, the final straw, I put the head on the body, and watched miserably as the icing oozed out between the layers, and the weight of he head was pushing the layers to slide in different directions, not to mention drooping hopelessly and threatening to topple. No amount of skewers, dowels, supports would work. By this time, it was 4:45 and I hadn't showered and the heat - well you get the picture..

I sadly gave up the project. I put the head on it's own plate, laying down (as i thought it might fall over without support), fixed as best I could the sliding cake (added some skewers to keep it from moving) and carted both of them to the party after I showered. showing up at 5:30 with a mess

The cake tasted good at least, but goodness the icing between the layers was so THIN - because so much had oozed out earlier.


Luckily it was only family and not an issue for them - but still. I'm having second thoughts about this whole thing - how do you let it go?



I KNOW better - my dinosaur was my FIRST cake like that, and I made an ARMATURE to support it because of all the horror stories. How could I make a good support for my first cake, that was 3 foot tall, and horribly miscalculate this little 4 layer cake??? Really?

Okay, let's go over this:

You work full time;
You're the mother of a toddler;
You're a wife
You have a home to take care of
you just put in a full week of making cakes for others which you stated you don't due on a full time basis
You're a perfectionist
You're too hard on yourself.
You need a rest.
Everybody has days like this.
It will get better
AND, I bet he loved it!

Sorry this happened to you, everyone here supports you!

I agree with enchanted. I was exhausted just reading about all you do! LOL. Cut yourself a break. The upside to this will be the funny stories you can share with your grandkids and the back and forth jokes with your family over it. We all have been there and survived, you will too.

Thank you! LOL.. when you say it like that - it sounds like a lot...

He did love it, and the family loved it too. I'm just dissapointed - but I know everyone goes through this kind of thing..

Thank you again..

Heck, my kids didn't even get birthday cakes last year until about 7 months after their birthdays. And you should see some of the cakes I've made for my husband, they're, shall we say, extremely basic.