We have soooo many talented cake designers who make such wonderful, really great creations I thought this would be fun to go through these old posts.  Enjoy :)  http://www.cakecentral.com/forum/t/579315/post-your-worst-cake-cpntinued-since-after-the-crash

Although my friend loved it, this was my first serious attempt at a decorated cake and it was pretty much a disaster.  It was delicious because it was Hummingbird Cake with Cream Cheese frosting.  I worked and worked to get the buttercream smooth, but it wanted to droop and sag.  I didn't realize it until we cut the cake, but the icing was about and inch thick!!  No wonder it sagged!  First flowers, first bow, first drape and first dragon fly (only dragon fly)!

Here is another angle..

Man that thread made me feel super good...proves that even you awesome decorators had some rough starts!

but mine is certainly my first cake. 

Flat at as a pancake and brow sugar sand thrown about with horrible fondant.  The little characters aren't bad but the cake is  just awful and I was so proud of it when I did it!!

Sandra, it doesn't look bad at all! I think part of the reason your cake sagged was because cream cheese icing eats through fondant like you wouldn't believe. I made the same mistake not long ago and had to scrape it all off, re-frost the outside in regular buttercream, and cover the cake in fondant again...

My worst cake disaster was the first cake I ever made. I had never attempted working with buttercream before and had no access to fondant (cake decorating shops are hard to come by where I'm from), so I made mine from scratch with home made marshmallow fluff. I used two entire containers of red food coloring and it turned out a bright fuchsia rather than red. I also had no black food coloring, so I used melted dark chocolate instead (and a noticeably shaky hand) for the details. 

The result was a very wonky, decidedly gay spiderman:

@kristiemarie ‍, it is evident (to my old, seasoned eyes) that your cake was done by someone with little decorating experience, but it is really cute and a remarkable job for your first try!  You were certainly brave to dive right in with the fondant!  Good job!

@caketownathens ‍, I don't see a thing wrong with your cake!  If your piping was any straighter, it would be made by a machine!  Strange about the food coloring, though???  I always make my own fondant, but I use marshmallows instead of fluff.  Regarding my saggy cake, it is not covered in fondant, lol, just a whole lot of cream cheese frosting.  I think the sheer volume of frosting was making it sag.  The bows and the drape are fondant. 

@SandraSmiley ‍ Aw thanks, you're too kind! Marshmallows are hard to come by here, and the ones we do have are the pastel-colored, artifical-flavored crap that make home-made fondant a stretchy yet somehow cracking mess, so I save myself the pain and buy my fondant ready-made. The food coloring was a disaster! I had to stop mid-way, go back to the supermarket (covered in icing sugar, no less) and get more red coloring, which turned the fondant so wet and sticky it was impossible to work with, so fuchsia spiderman it was!

I could have sworn the outside of your cake looks like fondant! Haha maybe it was because that's what my own cake had looked like when I covered cream cheese frosting with fondant.

While we're on the subject of cream cheese frosting though (and apologies for hijacking the thread): you use the kind that comes in blocks, right? Have you ever tried working with the stuff in the tub? It's the only kind of Philadelphia-type cheese we get here and it's virtually impossible to get it to work when frosting a cake - too liquidy and remains soft even in the fridge. Any suggestions other than adding a ton more icing sugar? I can't make it work by adding butter because it always starts to split, regardless of whether I beat the crap out of it or just stir it at low speed with the paddle attachment... The only way I can make it usable is by mixing it into my italian meringue buttercream. That seems to stabilize it but it lacks the classic cream cheese frosting tang.

Yes, it's great to see how 'bad' our 1st tries were :)  I thought th is thread would encourage some of our newest decorators.  Wish I had pix of my 1st tries......but my X took them when he left me.

I'm fairly new to making fondant cakes (I've only made 7 so far) and aside from a culinary background, I have had no formal training in decoration. I really have been relying on sites like this one for basic information, tips, and techniques. That said, I have made a few cakes that I wasn't really proud of. For example, the goat cake, or rather what was supposed to be a goat.  Nothing would stay in place and I had the hardest time getting the proportions right. Blah!  I just finished the second cake shown last week. It was for a graduation party and the girl requested a laundry list of things that HAD to be included. 

@thecanadian160 ‍ 

Not in a million years would I consider either of those as failures. The goat cake especially is beautiful, such great detail! The graduation cake also looks very well made - it's just a case of the client not being able to self-edit a bit, but that's not on you.

@SandraSmiley ‍ 

I tried to reply before but for some reason my post was held for review. Thank you for the comment, you're too kind! Marshmallows aren't as readily available here, so making fluff from scratch was my only option at the time, and the result was a very stretchy yet prone to cracking bright fuchsia 

@thecanadian160 ‍ Neither of your cakes belong on this thread, they're flawless! I love the detail work on the goat cake, and the graduation cake isn't bad AT ALL, maybe just a bit busy, but that's not on you, it's on the client who couldn't self-edit ;)

You call those your *worst*??  Hey, those are super nice :)

Thank you! My wife keeps saying I'm too hard on myself and something like "Rome wasn't built in one day..." Maybe I should start listening to her for a change. :-)

@caketownathens, I do use the block type cream cheese and have no idea how you could use the spreadable cheese without adding a lot more sugar.  LorAnn makes a Cream Cheese emulsion that is very good in frosting.  I have used it in buttercream with Butter-Vanilla emulsion and it is delicious.  I am generous with the amount of flavorings I add, and do it by taste, not measurements.  When it suit me, I stop adding emulsion.  If you are getting good results by adding the spreadable cream cheese to your Italian Meringue Buttercream, the addition of a couple of teaspoons of the emulsion might just be the extra flavor you are seeking.

Do you have access to Wilton spray colors?  You could try tinting your fondant, then spraying it - red, in the case of Spider Man - to reach the proper color.

(Sorry about the multiple replies, my initial post was held for moderation for some reason)

@SandraSmiley, thank you so much for the detailed response. I'll definitely look into the LorAnn emulsion! 

As for the fondant, since that first attempt I started buying my fondant ready-made (white, red, black, all the "difficult" colors) so save myself some time and trouble ;) 

@caketownathens, I do the same.  Although I make marshmallow fondant all the time, if I need red or black, I buy it.  For black I have used dark chocolate fondant to start with and it is not necessary to add so much color to get it to black.

@SandraSmiley I do the same thing in a pinch - I also do that when I need black buttercream or chocolate ganache.