They liked my cake and other ramblings

So I volunteered to make the cake for the Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society Induction for the Alpha Alpha Rho chapter. Yep, I volunteered. I clearly need to have my head examined. Actually, it was a way for me to do what I do and help out where I can. I was happy to do it. Well, for the most part. As it came down to the end before deadline, I was stressing BIG TIME! This was a much larger project than I had planned on. It wasn’t the first cake I’ve done for other people, but it was still stressful still the same. What if I drop it? What if I burn it? What if I can’t get true black icing? What if the gold doesn’t work? What if. . . ? Lots of what ifs.

But I am pleased to announce that not only did I pull it off and have plenty of time to spare, it was pretty much without incident. I didn’t drop the cake this time!!! Yes, I’ve dropped a fully decorated cake before. Not a good thing to do. *hanging head in shame* I only had a few problems.

First, it was cold out and I did NOT get my cake to rise as much as I had hoped. It wasn’t even level on top. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t like normal. I am sure it had everything to do with the weather out. So I ended up having to bake 2 cakes instead of just 1. Not a huge deal. Fortunately, I had a spare cake mix in the pantry.

Second, it never fails that I end up with super moist cakes. This is a GOOD THING until you go to decorate it. I LOVE LOVE LOVE moist cakes so I always go back to a few select cake mixes. Yes, I make my cakes from a mix. I even switched my non-usual yellow cake mix because I didn’t want it as moist as the one I like the most yields. It didn’t matter, I still had to leave it sitting on the stove for 24 hours before I could ice it without incident. Yep, it was moist! You won’t catch me complaining.

Third, icing hardened up more than expected in the fridge and the cake board was not sturdy enough to support such a moist 2 layer cake. Yes, it is heavy! So I go to take the cake out of the fridge on Tuesday morning to finish decorating it and the cake flexes in the middle. I didn’t drop it though! The base layer of icing cracked. Fortunately, I had not mixed up the colors for the other icing yet (except black as it needs to set and hopefully darken overnight to black) so I still had white icing to whip back up and re-ice the top of the cake again. Problem solved, but I certainly had to be careful moving the cake to make sure it was reinforced in the middle.

Outside of these, I didn’t have much in the way of problems. None of these were a crisis by any measure. Dropping the cake, that is a crisis. Minor setbacks are just that, setbacks.

The cake even made it across town to the school in one piece. YAY!

But for your viewing pleasure. . .

I’ll have to rotate that picture later when I have a moment.

Induction went OK. It wasn’t spectacular. I was nervous as all get out. I was the key role. It went OK. We’ll just leave it at that. We have new members, what else is important? The cake was enjoyed! I did my part.