submitted by Stacey T…
I have been selling cakes on the side for the past 1 1/2 years. I have not had any blunders… until 2 days ago that is.
The customer wanted a 3D baseball glove and in the center, a baseball, all sitting on a bigger square cake. I had never done one before, but thought I could figure it out.
I had some help carving the mit. I froze the cake and started carving. It was completed and looked good. I then crumb coated it 2 days before the event. The night before I finished the glove, I put it on top of the 12″ square cake and had it all done. It was airbrushed and great looking. I didn’t put on the finishing touches because I figured I would wait until the next morning.
Well, I set my alarm for 9am to make sure I had one hour to finalize and box up the cake before the customer came. My kids woke me up at 7:30am for something and when I went downstairs to get it, I looked at my cake and was horrified to find that one entire side of the glove had collapsed. There was no way to salvage the glove, but luckily the base cake was OK.
I had to call the customer and ask what time the party was b/c I needed more time to redo the cake. I had 4 hours to redo the glove, but I told her I could not do it 3D b/c there was just no time. I began baking two 10″ cakes for the glove and a ball cake in case the glove didn’t work out. I rushed around the kitchen at top spead getting things done.
Luckily my partner was around to help (she does not decorate, although she did carve the glove the first time). I had her decorate the softball cake while I did the glove. I was airbrushing the glove when the airbrush falls off the table and breaks apart! My partner had to sit on it to give it pressure, but even then it was only weakly coming out, barely enough to finish the glove. I was literally doing the finishing touches as the customer is calling that she is on my street.
In the end, it turned out great and she got a bonus ball cake. I don’t know how I managed to finish it all in that short a time. Thank God my kids woke me up or I would have never finished on time. Now that I can say I have had my first cake disaster, I hope to never have one like that again!
That stress is aweful. I didn’t feel right the entire rest of the day, and I was just exhausted afterwards. I do not even have a picture of the first glove b/c I wanted to wait until all finishing touches were done. I didn’t think to take a picture of the horrible mess of a cake b/c I was too frantic to think I might want it later to laugh about… wish I had those pics!
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