There are two stories behind this cake, the birthday girl and mine!

Starting with the birthday girl, she is celebrating her 18th birthday with an American themed party. This is because she has her heart set on travelling all the way to America to study film production, which is why the two themes have been combined. It is a surprise cake, and I don’t actually know yet whether she liked it or not, but here’s hoping.

Now, I know it’s not usual for their to be a decorators story in this section, but so many of you leave me such lovely comments, that I wanted to share how no matter how much experience you think you have, things can go terribly wrong so very quickly. What I have learnt though on my cake journey is that after you’ve said a few “Oh my gods” and have gotten over the panic and the need to cry, you can turn disaster around.

So here is my cake story….at first everything was going well, three cakes baked, cut filled and ganached. The bottom tier is an 8" vanilla sponge, with vanilla Italian buttercream filling. The extended tier is two 6" sponges. I stacked the 6" to give me the height needed for the American tier. Ganached the two together and left them to set. Ironically, both cakes covered beautifully and I actually felt very proud of my handiwork.

I wanted the edges of the American tier to be super sharp and had seen a tutorial where the cakes are flipped, you decorate from the bottom upwards and so get beautiful edges. Great, I thought. I’ll do that. So, cake flipped and decoration commenced. At the end of what seemed like a hundred stripes I flipped the cake back over and it was then that I saw a few bulges. No matter what I did I couldn’t get rid of the bulges. My lovely straight stripes looked like waves. Now being a perfectionist I couldn’t let the cake go out without straight lines. So, I took them all off and did them again. Still bulges and they were getting worse. It was then that I realised that the whole cake had internally been compromised when I flipped the cake. There was only one thing to do…..strip the cake back down and rebuild it. I seriously just wanted to cry. Luckily I had just enough chocolate ganache in the fridge to do this and at 1.30 a.m. I finally went to bed.

The next day I covered the cake again and redid the stripes. Thankfully, no bulges this time, but I did not flip the cake. I wasn’t going to chance that again!

Now, on the top of the cake was supposed to be a clapperboard. For some reason I couldn’t get it to look right. I hated it so much I took it off to take the photos. However, the client really wanted it. 10 minutes before collection I went to put it back on to the top of the cake and another disaster….it broke in two. After a few more, “oh my gods” and shear panic when the door bell rings I had no choice but to tell them it was broken. I felt terrible. The client told me they would be back in 30 minutes to give me time to come up with something. So, I cut it down and managed to salvage a smaller version, which i told them to lean against the bottom tier. I also rustled up a few red, white and blue stars, glittered them and put them on sticks for them to stick in the top if they felt they needed them. Funnily enough it looked so much better smaller and so maybe it was fate that it broke, as it really was bad. Lol.

So, you see disaster strikes no matter how long you’ve been decorating. I know if I was reading this I would be thinking “oh no, how awful”, it would also make me feel a better, because there is this illusion that disaster can’t possibly happen to experienced decorators.

I would love to hear about any of your disasters and if anyone has any tips about the whole cake flipping thing, please let me know. I think my cakes are just too soft. Perhaps, they need to go in the freezer first to make sure they are super hard?

Thank you for reading my two cake stories, sorry it’s a bit long, but I hope it helps you on your cake journey to laugh at my silliness.

Much love to you all. Sam