Mess Behind the Masterpiece!

If I had a dollar for every crisis situation I encountered while in the kitchen becoming a self taught cake decorator...I would be able to give my cakes away for free!

I hesitated to add this page to my blog for fear that people might view it as "incapable" or "amateur," then I decided I didn't care cause I think I makes me relatable!!

Unfortunately, I have not taken a picture of every cake that cracked coming out of the pan, or documented the trips BACK to the store at 10pm on a week night for eggs, because I was one egg short!

Well the documenting starts now!

 Have you ever heard of the phrase "you have to laugh to keep from crying?"...THAT'S GENERALLY ME!

I decided to name this page "Mess Behind the Masterpiece" because I felt that it described these scenarios perfectly! A girlfriend and I came up with the idea one day while transporting cakes to a party, and laughing about how no one knows how stressful and time consuming cake and icing can be sometimes!







 

If you notice the finished product has a fake Tinkerbell...that's because the fondant version of her in the upper right, BROKE AT THE WAIST when I picked her up to put her on top of the cake! Guess I made her to skinny trying to live vicariously through her! No one should look that cute in green!!

The broken cake in the upper left is the very last cake (of 4) that I baked that evening, and OF COURSE the very last of my eggs, oil, and strawberry puree!! SO...off to the store I went to START FROM SCRATCH! I was not pleasant to be around! I think I vividly recall yelling out loud (to myself, cause no one else was home) "OF COURSE, OF COURSE!!!!" and then a few explicits while my maltese Lola stared at me with a half cocked head and a "whats your deal" look on her face!!

This...although hard to recognize was my first attempt at building Noahs Ark! I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I have a whole new level of respect for Noah! He made building an ark look easy and his was MUCH larger than mine! Needless to say this collapsed version went into the trash and the one next to it was re-baked from scratch, re-cut, re-iced and then each plank was cut from fondant and made to look like wood!!   

 

I really cant go into how HARD and how much chocolate I wasted teaching myself to curl chocolate!!

Have you ever curled chocolate?

Lets just say this...I threw away and entire metal sheet pan, and wasted three packages of melting chocolate before I even got one piece of chocolate that even remotely resembled a "curl!"

Yeah...good luck with that if you ever try it!! On the brighter side, I did have fun "sampling" the non-curls!

These are Salted Caramel Buttercream only because I accidentally put 1/2 tsp of salt instead of 1/4 tsp of salt, and created a whole new flavor of icing!!

 Glad these were practice cupcakes!!

 I would like to think that I had something to do with inspiring the new StarbucksFrappacino!

"Salted Caramel Mocha Frappacino"...you're welcome Starbucks!  

This little guy was for a girlfriend of mine, who enticed me with a pre-cake decorating margarita Happy Hour after work...BEFORE I started on the cakes!

I said "no, I shouldnt, I should get started" then shortly after that said "you know what... lets do it!"

I distinctly remember stressing, "Kelli this is probably not a good idea..."

considering I was making her child's 1st birthday cake for the following day!

 She reassured me that it was fine...so we met...had a two hour fiesta...I went home and worked on the cakes....AND THEN I woke up the next morning and HAD to re-ice the caterpillars face! GOOD TIMES!

 See that BIG orange and white sucker up top, that was not the sucker that I intended to go there!

I picture a cake in my head for WEEKS before I contruct it! I know what it is going to look like, and I OBCESS about the details when I am at work (the day job), I maticuliously calculate my errands, my ingredients, my "plan" from the time someone places and order to the time I drop it off. So things like a broken sucker seem like no big deal at the end of the day...BUT THEY ARE A BIG DEAL TO ME!

Needless to say while attempting to unwrap the one I ORIGINALLY bought to go there...the one I had envisioned there for weeks...I dropped it and it shattered into a million pieces!

And there was Lola looking at me, head half cocked with the "can I have it?" look on her face!

 I spent the whole next morning (day of the party) trying to avoid driving all the way back to the store that I had originally purchased the suckers from and went into 4 different stores looking for a replacement sucker and could not find one! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? I swear I see these every where when I dont need em, but that morning...they were M.I.A.!

Okay so Martha Stewart and Betty Crocker make these cupcake cones sound like a walk in the park...and THEY ARENT! lol! These little suckers are top heavy and while baking and decorating isnt that difficult...TRANSPORTING THEM IS!

The first transporation blunder I encountered was from one side of the kitchen to the other when 6 of them ended up on the FLOOR! So I freaked, cussed...then turned the oven back on, and mixed a new batch of batter and STARTED FROM SCRATCH!!

This "issue" turned into my mother at the store looking for the perfect size dixie cups, my friend Julie double sticky taping the cups to aluminum pans then filling the pans with rice, and placing the cones in the cups to keep them stable and eliminating them from touching one another in transport! My sister cutting 1" x 1" little squares from fondant for another cake, and me scrambling to finish the candyland cake that went with these cupcakes!

Let me tell you...that was one stressful 15 minute car ride, the first bump backing out of the drive way Julie said "OMG this is stressful!" meanwhile she was holding the JUMBO cupcake that was for the smash cake in a dixie cup in her hand! I finally told Julie "honey, we have to stop looking at them, I have to look at the road!!" lol! (Juls....I dont know what I would have done without you that day)