The current EDF Energy adverts feature a little dancing orange blob. According to Mr Chris he has my dance moves. Anyway we love him so I decided to make him in to a cake.
Due to a lack of time and general ignorance on my part this cake quickly became a disaster.
The problem when you live with someone and your home is open plan, it is very hard to make a cake without them seeing it. I told Mr Chris I wasn't doing his cake and then took a secret day off work. It was a real rush to complete it before he got home which led to my first problem.
Because I was rushing I didn't leave the cake long enough to cool before applying my crumb coat of butter cream. It was a hot day which also didn't help. This meant my crumb coat was runny and ended up being only a thin layer. It wasn't a major disaster but it meant you could see the layers between my sponges when the fondant was on.
I used a ball tin purchased from Lindy's Cakes to form the little guys body. Lindy's FAQs give some good tips and guidance for using this tin but I should have paid more attention to them.
I baked two ball cakes and stacked them one on top of the other. To do this Lindy's FAQs advise to flatten the top of the bottom tier and add support dowels to prevent it losing its shape. The support dowels are crucial!
As his body is squashed when he is dancing I decided it wouldn't matter too much if the bottom tier was squashed from the weight of the top one, so I didn't add any support :O
Yes, I'm a complete newb when it comes to stacking cakes.
The result was the bottom tier began to crumble and collapse, and the top tier started to slide backwards where the bottom one was giving way. I had to prop him up with a biscuit tin. He lasted long enough for Mr Chris to see what he should have looked like and get this photo. Eventually (about a week later) I was able to laugh about at his head falling off.So long story short....
I'm glad I tried something new because that is how you learn and get better but lessons learnt here:
- Give yourself plenty of time
- Always allow your cakes to cool completely before icing
- When stacking cakes add plenty of support to the lower tiers
- When trying something new do not ignore advice from the professionals
- Stay calm and don't take it out on your sister when she is only trying to help :)
0 comments: