Protect the Cake!

Its a rookie mistake, but almost everyone has made it.

Scenario: you walk in on a mangled cake.  It was perfect when you last saw it, but the world has combined forces to destroy your perfect creation.  For example, I had made a gumpaste cake topper for a friend.  I left it on the counter while I focused on another cake detail.  When I turned back around (maybe only 3 minutes later) my niece was happily nibbling on the last bite of the topper.  I learned an important lesson, and its better to learn it before a disaster happens.

Bottom line, do not leave your cake vulnerable to anything!  Especially if there are little kids about.  They are attracted to pretty cakes like moths to a flame… trust me.  Put the cake somewhere safe and high.  I am re-posting an email submission sent to me.  May this be the shipwreck that teaches you to avoid rocky shores!

Janice (Portland, Oregon):

You asked for cake stories.  This is my very worst one.

I made a cake for David’s birthday, chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream filling, truffle icing.  Everything went great and it came out BEAUTIFUL.   I was thinking, this Is such a perfect cake, I want the presentation to be perfect.  I should put it on a doily.

I didn’t have a doily.

But the store was five minutes away and that doily would really be the icing on the cake, as it were.  So I dashed down to the store and got a doily for my beautiful chocolate cake.  I was gone less than ten minutes.

That was long enough for my dog Cheyenne to eat the cake.  The entire cake.  Every bit of it. Every crumb.  There was a smudge on the carpet – that’s what was left of one of the best cakes I ever made.

I got so mad at that dog.  I have never been so mad at anybody as I was at her.  I shrieked and banished her to the backyard, and I’d go out every now and then and yell at her about how bad she was.  Oh yeah, I’m a sweetheart.  But even as I was such a bad dog mom, I totally realized it was all my fault.  I had left Cheyenne alone in the house, within striking distance of something edible.  I might as well have written her name on it.

After yelling at the dog, I immediately set about to make a replacement birthday cake.  Absolutely everything went wrong.  I didn’t have enough eggs, ingredients were the wrong temperature, I hurried some steps too much and skipped others, and the result – I won’t tell you what I called it, but you can use your imagination.  It was not only too ugly even to laugh at, but did not even taste good.  It was the WORST cake I ever made, and the only one that ever went into the trash almost completely intact.

David’s birthday was ruined that year because I was so mad at the dog.  I wouldn’t let her in the house and continued to yell at her for a couple of days, until David said, “Well, you can’t leave her in the backyard forever, so let’s take her to the animal shelter.”  That was enough to snap me out of it. I went right into the backyard and asked Cheyenne to forgive me for being such a hothead.  She graciously did.  Everybody is nicer than me.

But then again, Cheyenne is the only one who ever got to taste the best cake I ever made.

(Thank you, Janice, for sharing your story with us.)