Strawberry Upside Down Cake (Long, But Funny...now)
Decorating By redpanda Updated 21 Aug 2006 , 5:09pm by Aztec9206
My cake disaster occurred at work in a university department. I was the designated cake person for our office of about 15 people. I usually tried to make some kind of novelty cake that was meaningful to the honored person.
We had a new employee that I really hadn't gotten to know yet. (He was an older man from the Phillipines, and really didn't tend to socialize.) I knew that he liked strawberries, so I baked a white cake, which I filled with white chocolate mousse and decorated with pirouline cookies around the sides and white-chocolate-covered strawberries on top.
There was much discussion over where we were going to do the cake, and it was finally decided that I should set it up on the table in our mini-conference room, which doubles as an open-plan office for some of the part-time employees. I put the cake in its carrier on the table in the conference room and went to go wash my hands.
I got back to the conference room to find the door locked (!). I swung open the letter slot in the door, to peek in to see if I saw anyone in the room. There was a part-time employee working on a computer near the door, and at the back of the room, near the table with the cake was the birthday honoree. I looked in time to see him pick the carrier up *by the lid* and start walking away from the table with it. 
Well, gravity had its way, and the cake carrier bottom fell out, and the cake fell to the ground, flipping on the way down. The cake landed squarely upside down. 
The poor guy responsible for this disaster stood there, helpless, looking like he'd like to be anywhere but there. I finally had to knock on the door (my key was in my purse in the room), and have the part-timer let me in. After letting me in, she hightailed out of the room, I guess so as not to be a witness if I were to kill him.
She must also have gone to alert the other employees, who it turns out had decided that they wanted to use the large conference room, because we were going to have a full-staff turnout, and the mini- one would be too crowded. The whole gang returned to see the cake sitting there in all its destroyed glory. (Luckily most had seen it before the disaster.) Several encouraged me to do what I could to salvage the cake, because they didn't want to have to do without.
I slid the cake board between the top (now bottom) layer of the cake and the icing for the top (now bottom) layer, leaving the berries and icing on the carpet, and we all enjoyed strawberry-less upside down cake.
We did our best to clean up the mess on the carpet, but for a long time, there was the odor of buttercream and a whitish smudge on the carpet.
Lesson learned: Tape the lid onto the carrier until ready to serve!
RP
The cake sounded delicious before it became an upside down cake.
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