Oh the horror of it!!!

I’m relatively new to cake decorating but decided to expand my skill-set and try a topsy turvy.  All went well with construction.  Layers were leveled … bubble tea straws placed as supports.  For a beginner, the cake decorating was acceptable (tho there’s always room for improvement).

I packed everything up in a sturdy box with nonskid mat on the bottom and it was placed it on a level surface in the car.  It theory, the short 6 mile transport should have been a breeze  Unfortunately, a rainy day and a driver rear ending the car in front of me necessitated hitting my brakes a bit harder than I (or the cake) liked.  Although automotive catastrophe was avoided, the feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that a cakery disaster occurred in the sealed box.

Upon arrival at work, I opened the box and what should my eyes behold - A total cake collapse.  The front was mostly intact.  But the back broke off and splattered.  The top layer appeared to ski right off the filling and catapult itself onto the cardboard.  The cake carnage was horrifying!!  Cake shards and frosting splatters everywhere!! Lol

However, my forensic examination of the remains of my slaughtered cake supplied me with a learning opportunity.  What I could have done better:  Supports should have been placed further apart, I should have driven a skewer thru the center of the entire cake … and it should have been cold.  There would probably still have been damage … but perhaps not as extensive.

But on the bright side … It was just a practice cake nobody was disappointed … AND there was no hesitation by people not wanting to “cut the pretty cake”.  Now onto my next learning experiment. :-)   

Oh how well I know that feeling, but with me it was a wedding cake on the hottest day of the year -for an outdoors wedding.  We were only going a couple towns over- how hard can this be.  I have directions from the bride and GPS.  Piece a cake.  Nope.  Totally lost.  The address the bride gave me took us up a steep hill in the wrong direction.  This is where the carnage happened.  GPS was no good because the bride forgot to tell me the address was a private one and not on GPS.  The local police station was closed and the only cop was directing traffic AT THE WEDDING.  The Librarian was deaf as a doornail and couldn't understand who I meant.  Lost the bottom tier of the cake.  Ran back home and got a dummy to replace it for display,  Found out from the matron of honor that the bride detests bling and the dummy was surrounded by bands of rhinestones.  Damn!  Finally just used the top three tiers and wrote a massive apology to the bride - she wrote back that she never noticed that a tier was missing because they were all suffering from the heat and had had too much champagne. They may not have noticed but I couldn't stop shaking for at least three weeks afterwards.

We all learn by doing :) I'm a newbie and I've made mistakes and learned lessons from them too!! It's good that you are able to see what needs to be done differently next time and that nobody was disappointed and most importantly cake didn't go to waste lol. 

My then three (now five) daughter still remembers well the screaming and sobbing from a similar situation.  Every mistake is an opportunity to learn. :)