My First Caketastrophy

Decorating By Kimskakes23336 Updated 3 Aug 2007 , 11:53am by tnuty

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Kimskakes23336 Posted 1 Aug 2007 , 1:34pm
post #1 of 5

Okay, so I'm new at this cake decorating, I've done about 15 cakes and gotten great feedback on all of them. My confidence level was high so for a friends "suprise" baby shower, I voluteered to make the cake. I was so proud of myself, I was going to attempt the stacked baby block cake in the Wilton Celebrate Fondant book. How hard could it be? I had scaled down my blocks to 3" squares because I only needed to feed 20, not 96 as the original behemoth cake feeds. After 12 hours, I attache my dowels and supports and start to stack the blocks. Right in from of my eyes, the blocks start to lean and smash down on each other. I add more dowels which cause the cake to hopelessly lean, and all the fondant seams start to seperate as the cake continues to squish itself. By the time I give up, the blocks are hopelessly craked and smashed and full of holes from the dowels. I decided to just bring the "blocks" but go buy her a food lion cake. I feel aweful but all the other girls told me it isn't that bad and to just serve it, it's still cake. I admit defeat and will not set my sights so high until I get more experience.

Here is the cake during my last attempt to try to salvage it, just before I gave up.
LL

4 replies
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fooby Posted 1 Aug 2007 , 2:34pm
post #2 of 5

I left a comment for this cake and was thinking if it was dowelled well. It seems that it was. Another thing is I'm not sure if you used a dense cake. It looks like there wasn't enough support under the "Y" block. Is there anything under it? Or is it just the corners of the bottom blocks that are supporting it?

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meancat Posted 2 Aug 2007 , 3:05pm
post #3 of 5

did you use a box cake? Because that or not giving it enough support will do that. I had that happen to one of mine also - they I went to scratch cake and now make sure to cut my supports just a tad higher than the actual cake.

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leta Posted 3 Aug 2007 , 7:03am
post #4 of 5

I think that it's great for a first attempt. I like your colors and your fondant borders are very clean.

How many dowels did you put in each one? Even 3 dowels (the min you could use) might crack up a cake that small. It could be that the cake just couldn't be scaled that small. I also agree that a reg cake mix probably wouldn't be able to stand up to that much cutting, stacking, and handling.

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tnuty Posted 3 Aug 2007 , 11:53am
post #5 of 5

I think your design and your work had great potiental....please dont give up I think you probably couldnt have scaled the cake down so small, next time if you dont want to feed so many but still want the design try using dummies..You can still get the effect you want and not waste the cake.

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