Back in the Saddle

The cake saddle that is.

It sure seems like it has been a while since I did any caking. I purposefully took most of the summer off to spend time with my kids, since D was going off to college. (sniff, sniff). We hung out a lot and went on a family vacation. I also needed to finish some long overdue house projects and yard work. But mysteriously, none of that got done. Hmm...wonder how that happened. Oh well, I'll get to it eventually.

Since I was refreshed and rejuvenated, I decided to upgrade my customer's simple small cake so I could make a design I had in my head. Well, the cake had other ideas. This cake made my hurricanoids flair. (In other words, it was a pain in my rear.)

First of all, it is not a good idea to have big ole honkin' chunks of cherries in a cake you know you are going to carve. I knew this was not a good idea going into it. But in my arrogance, I forged ahead. I was so cocky I even added more cherries than the recipe called for. I ain't a skeered of no cherries.

Then came time to carve. And it showed me who was boss. Even with my super sharp knife; it was a mess. Cherries came out in chunks, bringing precious cake along with it. Calling myself a few choice names, I proceeded on. I finally got the 2 tiers carved and patched up.

Then I scorched my first batch of cream while making the ganache to ice the cake with. After the do-over, I got them iced and let them set overnight to firm up.

The next day I got the bottom tier covered beautifully; but within 15 -30 minutes the fondant just started acting wonky. It was bulgy and kind of baggy and getting a lot of elephant skin along the bottom edges. It was morphing before my eyes! I have had this happen before on rare occasion, so I chalked it up to an "off" bucket of fondant. If I tried to take it off, I would have destroyed the cake. So I did what any good decorator would do in this case: uttered a few more choice words, and then I changed the design. The harlequin diamond pattern in fondant is a wonderful way to cover up boo boos or naughty acting fondant. So diamonds it was.

The original design was going to be somewhat musical. I was dying to use my new sheet music stencil I got at ICES. I got the upper tier covered and greased it down to get the corn starch off. (Cuz we all know I love my cornstarch, LOL). I was under an impending deadline and getting worried about finishing in time. For one nanosecond, my brain said, "Sharon, do not stencil on that freshly Crisco'd tier. It will not work." Obviously not having learned my lesson from the cherry fiasco, I blew myself off and proceeded to stencil. Folks, you cannot stencil with royal icing onto greasy fondant. You have to wait until it absorbs in. It was a smeary mess. Of course the black royal would not clean all the way off. It left a nice black stain. So I did what any self respecting decorator would do: after calling myself a new variety of very choice words, I changed the design. Hence the birth of the wacky black band around the top tier.

From there I just added the swags and the flowers I had made the night before. The cake no longer had a musical theme, but a gal has to do what a gal has to do. The customer loved it, so all is well that ends well.

Despite all my troubles, I thought it was kind of nice in the end.

And I very much love my array of fantasy flowers.

The filigree type flowers were made with cutters available here:

The trumpet like flowers were made with this petunia set:

The 2 white blossom flowers were made with the all in one rose cutter:

And I used various buttons from this mold for some of the flower centers:

The camouflage:

Moral of the story:

Listen to your gut;

never give up.