Not A Huge Disaster, But I'm Disappointed In Myself...
Decorating By pyseas Updated 30 Apr 2007 , 12:30am by tincanbaby
I'm still a cake decorating newbie. I can't ever imagine getting to the level of most of the people here, but I can dream!
Creativity does not come natural to me, and I am more comfortable following step by step instructions.
I wanted to try to carve a cake for the first time, so I chose to attempt the pillow cake instructions from this site (for my niece's first birthday)
I think my downfall was my filling. Trying to be "creative" I used a strawberry cream filling from a Pamperd Chef recipe.
First, my cake baked with a super hard crust on the outside. Each time I tried to carve near an edge a big chunk would come off.
Then, everytime I barely pressed the cake to carve it, the filling oozed out and eventually made the cake to soggy to even salvage. I did dam it, but you end up cutting the dam off in the carving stage.
I also think one problem was my cake wasn't completely frozen. I had run out of time and didn't plan ahead enough.
Now I feel like I should just stay with plain ol' buttercream and leave the beautiful cakes to the truly talented and creative people.
Everyone learns from their trail and errors, so don't feel bad. I learned that when you carve a cake, carve it first without the filling so that you can proportion everything out then fill as you like. Sometimes a completely frozen cake doesn't help me when I carve. It's too frozen, so I can't carve it 
I am fairly new to all this (last Fall) and haven't done a carved cake yet. Are you supposed to carve them with the filling in them or carve then tort...?
Also be aware of whether your filling can spoil if not refrigerated. I learned that the hard way with a fondant cake and a cooked pudding filling.
Don't give up...it's all part of the learning..... It's good that you get the ideas and want to try different things....
Everyone learns from their trail and errors, so don't feel bad. I learned that when you carve a cake, carve it first without the filling so that you can proportion everything out then fill as you like. Sometimes a completely frozen cake doesn't help me when I carve. It's too frozen, so I can't carve it
Okay, that sounds so common sense, but never in a MILLION years would I have thought to carve it before you filled it... 
(maybe I shouldn't admit that)
I tort and fill and then carve, cross my fingers haven't had a problem yet.. But I do freeze them first. Ha ha.. I've only done three so far, so don't take my word for it.
I'm going to watch this post though and learn from the experts.
I found that if you use kitchen scissors to trim first than a knife the shaping goes alot easier. The cake does have to be frozen to get a sharp shape though. Try again. They are actually fun once you figure it out.
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