I made this cake last week, in a week when I took too much on (saying no is not my forte!) I had problems from the start – firstly I forgot to put holes in the cake cards between the tiers, so had to turn my ganached cakes upsidedown to make holes (for the center dowl). Then I coloured the fondant too dark – so I had to add white to lighten it and I now have an excess of blush fondant! Then came to the stenciling, the bottom and top tier went ok, but I just couldn’t get the middle tier (which is stenciled at the back as you can see there is a 360 view of the cake at this venue!) to work – I don’t know why but I did it six times before it even came remotely close and I still wasn’t 100% happy with it. Then when I stacked it, the bottom tier cracked! I must have made the dowls a little too short! At this point (I was also on a really tight time deadline) I just sat there and cried! Then I rememberd watching an episode of Ace of Cakes ages ago where they’d had a similar problem and they used royal icing to fill in the cracks – so I tried it and it worked! Then came to the delivery – the venue is at the end of a very bumpy historical road so I was terrified and you guessed it, the bottom tier cracked – again! Lucky I had my royal icing repair kit with me though and after carrying the cake up and down two flights of stairs, setting it up, fixing it up and photographing it, I got back in my car and just about cried again (with relief). I was totally cake wrecked after this cake!