Another Caketastrophe

How many of you avid blog readers remember the sad story of the disaster I made of Caleb's first birthday cake the first time I attempted to experiment with creative cake making? If anyone has forgotten or didn't hear the story, you may want to check out my wagon cake post.

Well, I did again. I got this bright idea to try to make a fancy cake and bombed. Ready for the story? Here goes...

I decided to throw a tea party for my mom's birthday and found all of these beautiful 3-D teapot cakes on Pintrest. I looked through several websites to figure out how these creations were put together and borrowed from a few to come up with something I thought I could manage on my own. 

I went to Michaels and Hobby Lobby to try to find the supplies I'd need - the first being gum paste, which I had never worked with before. I was curious about the ease of working with it since, from what I'd read in the cake decorating book my sister bought me and seen on other websites, it seemed that you could just mold it like play-dough to make any kind of figure you wanted to add to your cake. I had a feeling it wouldn't be that easy because I know Michaels offers classes on how to work with gum paste, but my fearless cake decorating side took over and said "Go for it!"

Everything started off okay at first...

I pulled out my cake toolbox, my colors, spreader, decorating supplies, 

cake tip book, and, of course, the gum paste.

 

Since I'd read gum paste could be pretty sticky, I got out some cornstarch 

as recommend to help keep it off my hands and make it easier to work 

with. I learned that it was not just a suggested element; it was absolutely 

necessary. The gum paste was so sticky I couldn't do anything with it 

until I started adding some.

I added a little color to the gum paste and then made the spout and 

handle, adding a few toothpicks to attach it to the cake later as one 

site suggested. I never could get that beautiful smooth look I saw online 
though. Instead, my shapes really did look like I was working with 
play-dough, having the creases and dried out look my childhood 
creations did.

While in Hobby Lobby, I also purchased this gum paste mold to try to
 make some decorations to add to the exterior of my tea pot. Maybe 
this would work better than hand forming everything?

Using the mold was actually pretty easy to my relief, especially since 

I didn't have all the tools recommended for getting the pieces out of the 

molds.  I was a bit disappointed with the dulled colors compared to what 

I saw in pictures but part of that was the cornstarch that helped keep the 

items from getting stuck. I am not sure what you are really supposed to 

do, but I took a wet paint brush and went over one of the flowers after it 

dried to see if I could get the color to pop a little more. It worked!

To make the different colors of gum paste, add your icing colors

 the same way you do for normal icing - a little at a time with a toothpick. 

The problem was that, unlike with normal icing, I couldn't just stir it up 
with a spatula. After mixing all those different balls of gum paste 
together with one color after another, I thought my hands would never 
be the same! I tried washing and soaking them but it was a couple days 
before they were back to normal. If any one has a better suggestion for 
mixing, let me know! (To make this even sillier, I had to teach my 
Bible study group immediately after dying my hands like this. Since I 
tend to talk with my hands, I had to explain why my hands looked 
the way they did.)

Day 2 of operation teapot cake: the trouble begins.....

On one lady's blog, she demonstrated how to use a ball cake pan to make 

the round teapot. Thankfully, Hobby Lobby had one and I think it will be 

a good purchase that I can use for a lot of different designs down the road.

Baking the cake was the easy part of the day though! Everything 

started going downhill from here, beginning with Caleb bothering 

the gum paste pieces that I had left of the dinning room table to keep 

them out of the way while I was baking. Though warned not to touch 

the cake pieces, they were just too irresistible and the handle of my 

teapot did not fair well. I wish I could say that I kept my cool at this 
point, but after all the work, time, and money put into forming these 
pieces, especially since I was on crunched schedule to prepare everything 
for the party, my temper flared more than it should have. He didn't seem 
too upset by the scolding and time out though; what really got to him 
was when I told him that he had broken NaNa's cake. Later in the day 
when she came to visit, he ran to her immediately to show her that 
he had broken her cake. Despite his ornery streak that morning, I was
 thankful to see how much he cared about his grandma and that he 
really does have a beautiful little heart.

While my mom was visiting, I remade the handle and spout as well as a ball for the topper on the lid. I leveled the domes off the cakes and then froze them so they wouldn't crumb when I put the icing on later. Since I wasn't feeling well that evening, I went to bed super early and decided to finish the following day, hoping that no more issues would arise.

After nursing Hadley at around 3:30 a.m, I decided to go ahead and try to finish my cake since it was Dave's birthday and I didn't want to take away from the fun of his day. Plus, I knew with the kids still in bed, I would have uninterrupted time to work, which was important for working with the icing before it hardened.

First, I tried mixing up the package of Wilton's buttercream icing I'd found at Michaels so I could icing the frozen cake. While I thought I followed the directions, I later realized that I didn't add the ingredients in quite the order it suggested. Once I saw that I'd made a mistake though, it seemed to me that all would be okay in the end and I just continued mixing. Wrong! The icing never fluffed up like it was supposed to and was more the consistency of paint than buttercream, but I decided to try to work with it anyway since I didn't have a whole lot of choice at that time in the morning.

I slid a knife under the frozen cakes and stacked them on top of each other with a little icing in between and skewers to help hold it together. While trying to prying them from the plate though, I had accidentally cut my finger with the knife. I didn't realize it at first but when I glanced down, I saw it - a drop of blood in the icing I was using to decorate the cake. AHHH! Gross!!! Nothing was usable now! Time to throw out plan A and start from scratch!!!!!!

Thankfully, I had some pretty tea party cupcake holders, so a little later in the day I whipped some up to use as a back-up in case I couldn't figure out how to make another cake or just ran out of time and patience.

While I didn't really have time to try to do the 3-D cake again, especially when I wasn't sure it would even turn out, I had another idea. Over the summer, I made a dinosaur cake for a baby shower using two round cakes, one for the body and one to cut out the head and tail. I decided I could do the same for a teapot. It worked pretty well without a hitch, especially since I went to Martins grocery store in town to buy my buttercream this time around like I usually do instead of trying to make it from a mix. It wasn't perfect, but it was usable. :)

Today I revisted the caketastrophe I originally tried to make into a masterpiece. I knew we couldn't eat it since the icing was contaminated, but I thought there was no point in throwing it out yet until I practiced on it. Since I had some left over buttercream icing from Martins and the pieces I'd made from the gum paste still, I took the pitiful looking cake out of the freezer to see if I could at least try to finish it before I tossed everything.

 Here is the frozen cake with just the original drippy icing.

 I added a little of the leftover buttercream from the grocery 

store and stuck on the handle, spout, and topper. A little better, right?

 Next I pulled out a few of those flowers, leaves, and birds I made with 

the gum paste mold and attached them with dabs of icing on the back.

 The smaller pieces went on easily but the longer pieces that were 

supposed to be borders didn't work out very well for this rounded 

cake. After they harden, you can't mold them to the cake without 

breaking them. I figured this would happen and tried to round them a 

little before they hardened but it didn't help. I am not sure if there is a 
way to do it or if I should have just used a bag of icing and tip to pipe 
a border around the bottom.  I didn't want to get all the supplies out to 
do it, but I also should have piped a circle around the top to look like
 the lid which I'll do in the future if I try it again.

It's not perfect but at least you get the idea of what I was trying to do!

I guess it is a good thing that starting next Saturday I am taking a Wilton's level 1 cake decorating class at Michaels. Hopefully, with a little direction, there will be no more disaster cakes - although they do make pretty good blog posts.