Cakemess, or Week One of Wilton Cake Decorating Course

My brother and I decided to sign up for a cake decorating course offered by Wilton through our local Bulk Barn. It was only a month, and we were really excited. It came with a workbook and a kit with a bunch of tools and everything.

We went to the first course, which was just an introduction, where the Instructor made icing a cake look as easy as...icing a cake. We learned about different consistencies of icing, where I realized that my icing was way too wimpy to ever be stiff enough to make shell borders, let alone a rose. We were instructed to bring an iced cake to class for the next week, as well as a whole whack of icing, with the ultimate goal being a round blue cake with a rainbow on the top.

We left excited.

Unfortunately, our hopes were dashed with a series of mishaps throughout the weekend (leading up to our Sunday afternoon class) making for one of the most frustrating, and yet hilarious, afternoons of my life.

It started with the cake. I decided that my cupcake agenda was already expensive enough, and that I needed to find a way to make a cake that could be cost effective. Bulk Barn sold white cake mix en masse that called for nothing to be added but a little water. So I bought enough for two cakes (as per the instructions) and didn't give it much thought.

Until Saturday. I stood in front of my cake, and stared in disbelief. My cake mix, which said was enough to make a full cake, was a wimpy little flan-looking thing a mere 2 inches high. I couldn't believe it. This was my first cake to decorate? Well alright, I thought, don't stress about a wimpy cake. It will look awesome once its covered.

Riiiight.

20 minutes later I tried flipping it out of the pan. DISASTER! It turns out that no amount of flour or cooking spray is going to make a Bulk Barn white cake unstick. Instead it crumbled out of the pan in a very unflattering way. Still, I pressed on, piecing the ugly thing back together with my fingertips.

I was determined.

However, I was now also flustered. So flustered that when I looked at the recipe for the buttercream icing (which is made at a stiff consistency, and then brought down to either a medium or thin consistency) I read it completely wrong. Backed by my new worry that my icing wasn't stiff enough, what I tried to spread on the cake was like a block of cream cheese. It wasn't going anywhere, except rolling like a snowball across the top of my cake, gathering layer after layer of crumbs.

My mother found me crying in the kitchen, and her efforts to help were met with a very ungrateful attitude. No, that's not true - I accepted her overtures of help, but the cake was just too far gone. Five minutes, six angry yelps, and countless craters of cake later, I turned my spatula on an angle and let my anger out.

Three karate chops later my cake looked like this:

Needless to say, this cutie wasn't going anywhere except in the trash.

Six mouthfuls of cake and one long glass of water later, I had mustered up enough strength to try it again. This cake had similar problems -- it was a wimpy little thing that cracked into pieces. This time, though, I resorted to more drastic forms of reconstruction. Ten minutes, three skewer sticks, and a pair of garden shears later, I had pinned it together enough to handle a coat of (this time much thinner) icing). It was crappy, flat, and lumpy, but it was going to have to do.

Well didn't my brother laugh at me. And didn't he whip up a Duncan Hines chocolate cake that rose like a balloon, sniggering the same way.

But didn't he get impatient, ice it warm, and get crumbs all the way through! :P

He was so mad. He arrived at class mad. His madness was compounded by the fact that I had duplicated the mistake with icing - making it far too thick - this time too thick to properly pipe out of the bag to even make dots and shells.

It was so horrible I could only laugh. The instructor took pity on us and let us use some of her icing, and we all tried to laugh it off. Except the brother. He was pissed. So in a last ditch effort I ad-libbed my cake decoration to read:

Unfortunately, as indicated by his response, there was no salvaging this day for Simon

What a day. We went home and ate Simon's cake. Mine was not very good (as indicated by attempt #1) and full of sticks. So that one got a full afternoon of sunshine on the counter, and then made its way to the trash can.

Next week we are decorating cupcakes (thank God, a medium I understand) and I bought some Duncan Hines mixes that ensure a better raise. I've also learned more about icing, and Simon has insisted that he try piping with it before we go to class to make sure I don't mess it up again.

What a cakemess!