cake wreck.
Friday, June 4, 2010 at 02:27PM Jim said it would be catharctic to blog about it. For days I felt completely nauseated even thinking about it, so no post. But now that a few weeks have passed, I'm ready to call it a good experience, laugh and move on.
Here's the story of this masterpiece of cake wreckage...
Cyndee teaches Yearbook. The job requires sweat & deadlines & blood & maybe even tears. I know because I've watched her do it for many years now. But the culmination and fulfilling moment after all that pain is the schoolwide Yearbook Party. For which she asked me to make a cake this year.
A cake to feed 200. That's big, people. I've done cake dummies that large, but never all real cake of that magnitude. And that's where the problem came. Jim guesstimated (and the man is ususally uncannily accurate) that the entire thing weighed about 70 pounds.
Those who know me see the problem at once. I am an absolute weakling. Well, I got the bottom two tiers stacked and then realized it had to be put in the garage fridge while I worked on the top. It was heavy, but I wasn't sure who to call for help, so I foolishly went for it. Before I made it to the destination, my arms were noodles and I dropped the whole thing about five inches onto the shelf. At that point I sensed that the support dowels were out of place. I was working on about four hours of sleep and had already had a nightmare experience with red fondant, but instead of taking it all apart and starting over, I just crossed my fingers.
(really poor lighting (& focus & color) in fridge! the cake actually looked great at this point, just bulging some on the bottom tier)
So the second all out nightmare experience came as I rode in the back of the Expedition with my nearly 20 hours worth of now unsteady labor. About halfway there, I realized that despite 10 crossed fingers and many mumbly prayers, the cake was going to topple. I reached for the top two tiers, which were still stable, and took them off just in time.
The rest fell to pieces. Sad pieces. And I laughed. And laughed. And felt really bad when we reached Cyn's school and I had to break the news.
A painful lesson in poor decisions.
I did not follow my intuition to get someone strong to move the cake.
I did not follow my intiution to re-stack the beast.
The bright side?? I blessedly DID follow my intuition to put a towel in the back of my Expy for the trip.
The towel was disasterized while the back of my vehicle remained pristine. Small victory. I'll take it. And the lessons learned.
Reader Comments (10)
And how much do I love that D is designing cakes? That is so great.
And D's cake pic was awesome!! What a sweet boy to make his cake-making mom a cake just for her.
At least you put a towel in your car. Good grief.