Parchment Paper's Not Supposed To Do That!
Decorating By ladycrim Updated 6 Sep 2006 , 6:16pm by Narie
It was the night before my Intermediate Cake Decorating final. I had to prepare a frosted but undecorated cake to take to class.
Unfortunately, the parchment paper rounds I bought to line the bottom of my cake pans were too big. Well, no problem - I'd just fold up the sides, and then it wouldn't stick to the sides either, right?
Ahem. WRONG.
When I removed the cakes from the pans, the cake actually stuck to the parchment paper! Both cake layers ripped in half! So now it was after 10:00pm, I had to work the next day, and I had two very unuseable cake layers. I just started crying.
I ended up calling a bakery and buying an undecorated cake just so I'd have something for class. These days, I use the flour/shortening/oil mix to line my pans!
Second thing to go wrong with the cake: part of the assignment was to make flowers out of royal icing. So I did, but I failed to realize just how hard royal icing gets. I couldn't cut the cake! I ended up moving the flowers around just to slice the thing.
Oh, well. At least my first attempt at basketweave came out pretty nice:
I'm sorry about that! Your cake is lovely with beautiful colors and a great basketweave too! 
I am sorry to hear what happened.
It is so weird that parchment paper didn't work for you. I always use parchment paper to line my pans and actually I cut it bigger than the cake and fold it around, so the sides of the pan will be covered too. It works everytime and that way i dont have to use any grease.
I am sorry to hear what happened.
It is so weird that parchment paper didn't work for you. I always use parchment paper to line my pans and actually I cut it bigger than the cake and fold it around, so the sides of the pan will be covered too. It works everytime and that way i dont have to use any grease.
I think what happened was the batter seeped around the sides of the paper, effectively baking the paper into the cake.
I've never had trouble cutting royal flowers on a buttercream cake - i'm surprised they were that hard! I've used some that were at least a month or two old and was still able to cut them - yes and eat them - on my buttercream cake - I think maybe the grease of hte buttercream broke down the royal icing so it wasn't as hard - but it still held it's shape.... so I dunno....
I always use parchment paper on the bottom of my pans unless they are really small - but I haven't done it on the sides.... hope this doesn't happen to you again - but your cake does look great! Good job!
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