Standard Chocolate Poodle Cake

Last Friday was the 20th anniversary for one of my co-workers, Linda. In commemoration we decided to make a fuss about her (she deserves it), and in our discussions together as a team (covert, secretive, discussions) we decided there should also be a cake. I volunteered to make it and immediately regretted it.

I didn't regret the offer, per say, I was just worried about what I could possibly come up with that would do the cake justice. I didn't want to do just another slab cake, because then it would have just been smarter to buy one, especially since my standard decorating skills aren't that hot (God bless you Wilton, I'm just a slow learner).

So there was the challenge. I knew Linda liked golf, and gardening, yadda, yadda, yadda - but I also knew that she had a standard chocolate poodle. I knew this because of the high number of pictures plastered all over the cubicle of this beautiful dog doing the silliest things.

Once I put the two together, there was no other way about it. I searched on the internet and I found a picture of a pink and white poodle of the same design (I can't seem to find the link now, but I literally did a google search for "poodle cake"). It looked easy enough and heck, I have a mixer ;) What could go wrong?

Eager and excited with my plan of attack, I greeted Thursday night with enthusiasm. I had found out that Linda's favourite cake was vanilla chocolate chip, and as Thursday was already cupcake day, I decided to cut corners by making a vanilla cake mix and just mixing some chocolate chips in.

Bad idea. Baaaaaaaad idea. Turns out that chocolate chips are just a little too heavy for a vanilla cake batter and they sunk like stones. But that wasn't the worst part. The real problem was that when tipping the cake over, I realized just how far they had sunk.

!!!!!!!!! Shoot !!!!!!!!!!!

It was a moment for pause. For contemplation. For re-evaluation.

For fear.

I looked at this horrifically ugly cake and thought oh God I've ruined Linda's day. I thought of a million ways I could just buy a cake and get it over with, but it was already 10 pm and the time for cake buying was long gone (unless you counted WalMart. And I hate WalMart).

So I soldiered on. I made some chocolate buttercream and tried my hardest to use the techniques dear old Wilton has tried to teach me - weilding my angled spatula like a crazed woman I gently patted globs of icing all over the cake, spreading gently to avoid the (unavoidalble) crumbs.

Thank God for the marshmallows. I rolled them in cocoa powder to make them chocolate-y and snipped the bigger ones (for the head an tail) in half to make them sit better on the poodle. There was black licorice for the legs, tailand one ear and a chocolate chip for the eye.

Cutting the shapes out of the cake seriously depleted the cake size...and I work with a crew of about 30, so that just wasn't enough. I had made a double-batch of cake mix and had made cupcakes as well (the chocolate chips sunk there too, but luckily the papers kept them in tact). I iced 22 of them with blue icing to read "Congratulations Linda! 20" which were artistically placed the next morning ;) along with a piece of the remaining cake iced as a water bowl reading "wow" (someone joked it was a good thing I hadn't placed the "water bowl" on the other side of the dog)

When I was finished I couldn't recognize the ugly broken cake. Instead all I saw was chocolate standard poodle - and thank heavens that's all Linda saw too! She loved it so much she called her husband and had him come in to take a look before we cut the cake. Which made the cupcakes a hit, too.

Linda got a chance to tell us all about her dog, and we all had the fun of selectively removing cupcakes for maximum spelling hilarity (at one point it read "Rats, Lindo")

I'm really happy with how this worked out. I don't do shaped cakes, really, so it was a great experiment, and a great chance to practice my icing skills around all those curvy corners. I still love cupcakes, but this was a lot of fun!