The Great Cake Disaster

Damn you, Martha Stewart. Damn you for making crafting, baking and cooking look so easy. Damn you for making me think I need to make a cake out of fondant to look snazzy.

So let's talk about the great cake disaster that was my special "Yay you started law school!" cake for The Mr.

Because we have found that vegan desserts are quite delish (I've made vegan cupcakes and we have been eating vegan cookies & cake from the vegan bakery/juice bar near our house), I asked The Mr if he minded if I tried to make a vegan cake. He said sure.

I made the cake Sunday night and noticed that it didn't rise very much. I didn't think much of it and wrapped them up and froze them for assembly later.

I made the marshmallow fondant on Monday night. It actually was pretty easy to make. I wrapped it up and put it in the refrigerator for assembly later.

The cakes were vegan chocolate chip cakes.

I made the vegan "buttercream" frosting last night and it was frickin' amazing. A-maz-ing. I could never be a pastry chef because I would be morbidly obese. How do you not lick a bowl clean? I had high hopes for this cake.


I also sketched out what I wanted the design of the cake to look like. I didn't want to just cover it with plain white fondant. I wanted something to add a little pizazz. I mean, this was my "Yay you started law school!" cake afterall. I also knew I had to keep the design simple or I'd fail miserably.

I decided to create a little cutout of my dogs' faces.


I started to assemble the cake since the fondant was still pretty cold.

Like the wax paper? I learned that trick from Sandra Lee. It keeps the frosting off of your cake platter.




And this is where everything went downhill…

I couldn't roll out the fondant to save my life. My dreams of ever working at Charm City Cakes quickly went out the window and I huffed and puffed my way to even try to flatten out the fondant mass.

I then had the bright idea to separate the fondant. Trying to flatten out sections of the fondant mass surely had to be easier than rolling out the entire fucking thing, right?

No.

So then I thought, "alright, well fuck the fondant all over the cake. I'll just try to make my doggie faces." Ppffft.

Here is what happens when you try to add food coloring to cold balled up fondant:


Farfegnugen, falafel, fudgecicle... Fuck fuck fuck!

Okay… well, how about I try to flatten this out. Maybe that will help mix the colors…


Son of a bitch. Unless I was intending to make my doggie faces appear as though The Mr had been on LSD, this wasn't working out as I had planned.

Because I hate wasting anything, I tried to think of a quick plan. I busted out my cookie cutters and picked shapes that I thought could work for my "Yay you started law school!" cake.

A star because The Mr was the shining star of the day.
A heart because I heart him.
A clover to wish him luck.
And random doo-hickies to fill space.

I couldn't figure out a way to justify an umbrella or a watermelon slice.

And voila! Everything looks fancier in a cake dome.


The Mr thought the cake was "cute" and feigned some sort of excitement for it. I think he was just exhausted and starved from law school orientation.

So not only did my dreams of creating a beautiful fondant cake get destroyed, the cake tasted like SHIT. Actually - worse than shit. It tasted like the shit of a dead cat that was shoved up a dead cow's butt for months. Okay - maybe not that bad but it definitely seemed like I flavored the cake with gym sock sweat.

The Mr took a bite and said, "Oh - this is interesting… it's not really cake-like…"
Then I took a bite, "Holy fuck - this is awful! Bleh!" [spit out bite]

The Mr still tried to be polite but I told him it was okay to say he didn't like it because if he really did like it, I'd have to check his pulse to make sure he wasn't a zombie that liked to munch on people's brains.

He hesitatingly agreed that it was crap but complimented the hell out of the frosting.

And to prove even further why I heart him, he looked up vegan cakes this morning and sent me some other suggestions. I may try my hand at one of the recipes listed here.

Have any of you ever decorated with fondant? How the hell did you do it?!