Woof, it has been a long week. But let’s jump back to this time last week. Have you guys ever had a daunting project looming ahead of you that you weren’t sure you could achieve well, much less execute perfectly? This is how I feel about cake decorating. I am not a perfectionist, but when I’m told I need to be, I’m insanely OCD to overcompensate. I also am not an artist and do not have a steady hand. I am the kind of person who needs to practice to be good at certain things. And while I have made three practice cakes in the last month, I still did not feel prepared for this weekend’s project. However, a wonderful Harry Potter quote popped into my head that brought back all of my courage:

“It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew – and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents – that there was all the difference in the world.” – J.K. Rowling

I know that there is a HUGE difference between me baking a cake for a 5 year old and Harry facing death…but this is important to me. My parents taught me to take pride in my work no matter what I’m doing. And I was taking this cake VERY seriously.

So last weekend was my nephew’s 5th birthday party. As part of my journey into learning how to bake, I took on the challenge of making his birthday cake. He asked for a Spiderman cake to match the theme of his party. I turned to the internet for inspiration and decorative ideas. After looking through hundreds of pictures of things I’ll never be able to accomplish, I decided to do a simple round cake with buttercream frosting topped with a layer of red fondant. For the decoration, I planned to draw a black web and place Spiderman action figures on top. Then he gets toys with his cake! Perfect for a five year-old!

So first things first. I needed to find action figures for the top of the cake. I did this first in case I couldn’t find what I needed at the store. Sure enough, Target failed me. So Amazon to the rescue. I found a pack of 10 action figures that were perfect! Aren’t they cute?!

The next step was to decide the cake flavors. Ideally, the inside of the cake would be blue, but I really didn’t want to add food coloring to the cake. My mom told me that they make blue velvet cake mix (like red velvet). However, after visiting three different grocery stores in the span of two days, this was no longer an option. I guess Bloomington does not carry all of the same things as in the big city (Indianapolis). But I did find a cake mix for a solid blue funfetti cake. Perfect, it’ll do!

Another advantage of making this cake was getting to try out these cotton “bake even strips” that I bought on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/4-Piece-Dampen-Strips-Absorbent-Cotton/dp/B07FVM3VN3/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=1DAXOJB24F7AH&keywords=cake+baking+strips&qid=1550793055&s=gateway&sprefix=cake+baking+%2Caps%2C175&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1 . I talked to a few people in my baking group, and they were skeptical, but said to give them a try. Normally when you bake a cake, the top of the cake domes up and needs leveling afterwards so that you have a flat, even cake for icing. The idea is to soak these strips in cold water for five minutes before strapping them around the cake pan, and then putting the cakes in the oven to bake. The water helps keep the cake moist and the strips help heat the core of the cake more than the rest which helps keep the middle of the cake as flat as possible.

Well, wouldn’t you know that I was distracted and overwhelmed at the idea of this cake already, and I forgot to soak the strips in water first…so nothing happened. Haha Oops! So I got more practice with cutting and leveling cakes. In the end it wasn’t that bad, but the last time i didn’t get the cake cut evenly, the whole thing toppled over! So, let’s talk about the next over-site. The back of the packaging on the funfetti cake said that it makes one 8 in. round pan. So I bought two packages. What I didn’t realize is that all of my cake pans are 9 in. pans. So after baking the cakes, and cutting the domes off, the cakes were only about an inch tall! I couldn’t take a two inch cake to my nephew’s party! So I decided to go out and get a box of red velvet cake mix and do alternating colored layers. But again, the grocery stores let me down. They didn’t have any red velvet mix. How can this be!?! So in a pinch I grabbed a box of strawberry cake mix and added a little bit of red food coloring to darken it a bit. They turned out pretty well, and I had no trouble leveling this time, thank goodness.

Ok, so next was the easy part. Making the buttercream frosting. I decided to leave this white and made it extra vanilla-y to counter the other flavors and colors already happening. I had the cakes frosted and layered in no time. Whew! On to the next step.

The next step was to frost the entire cake with the buttercream and make it as smooth as possible. I bought a little cake stand turner with the fancy spatulas and icing scrapers/smoothers. The spatulas were kind of worthless. It felt like the spatula was just getting in the way of what I was actually trying to do. I ended up using a butter knife to spread the icing around the cake, and then used the scraper. I definitely need more practice with this part because every time I would scrape it smooth, there would be “bald patches” in the icing. Maybe I just needed more frosting. As it turned out I didn’t have enough icing for all four layers and had to make another half of a batch. Lesson learned!

Alright, moving on. The next step was to make the fondant. I really liked the idea of making the fondant from scratch. The recipe I used combines marshmallows and powdered sugar. In my head this is a lot more tasty that what they sell in the store. I have successfully made this fondant before, but I had never tried to color it. I figure, ehh, it’s just food coloring. That can’t be too difficult! Wrong again. So, the recipe I used said to mix in the food coloring before adding in the powdered sugar. I added a bunch of red food coloring to the marshmallow, allowing that I would need a little extra so that it didn’t turn pink. However, I did not factor in that the powdered sugar is also white and would work against me.

So I go to work kneading the fondant with the sugar and watching the red fade more and more. I slowly get to the texture I want, but I need more red coloring. So I add a little more food coloring and begin kneading the fondant. But now the fondant is too sticky. So I add a little more powdered sugar, which turns it pink again. I added more food coloring and realize that the extra liquid is what is making the fondant sticky again, and the sugar is making the fondant pink again. I was fighting an uphill battle and I wasn’t going to win this one.

At this point, I was four hours into this process and I was not going to give up now. I calmly put everything aside, washed the food coloring off of me and high-tailed it to the nearest Hobby Lobby in hopes that they sold red fondant. I really despise going to Hobby Lobby because it’s a huge store and I can never find what I need. I eventually find the baking section and yes, they do sell fondant. For $10 a box! My jaw almost hit the floor. It wasn’t until I realized that I would need two boxes in order to cover the whole cake that my jaw actually hit the floor. But, at least there would be a red fondant cake at this birthday party!

I get this home and use one whole box, and half of the other. I really didn’t want to waste any if possible. However, after getting it all rolled out and laying it on the cake, I realized it wasn’t quite big enough to cover the cake. I ended up using the rest of the second box which meant that I had to re-roll the fondant. I will note that this fondant was the perfect color that I needed, so that at least cheered me up. But it did not taste good. It tasted like it was chalked full of red food coloring! But now I know why.

So after re-rolling the fondant, it had been just slightly over worked. I’m learning so much throughout this process! Over working the fondant will dry it out and cause it to crack or even break off. Luckily mine didn’t break (I didn’t have money to go back to the store and try again), but it did do some cracking. I googled what I could do about this, if anything. There were a few tips that said to rub the cracks with your finger to try and smooth them out. The warmth of your skin might be enough to melt the fondant back into itself. However, this was too far gone, so I pushed on. I know the birthday boy wasn’t going to complain about this particular imperfection, thank goodness!

Ok, so we’re almost there! The last thing I needed to do was pipe icing on top of the cake in the shape of a spider web. My thoughts were to make it look like Spiderman’s super hero suit and make a black web. I didn’t even try to go the food coloring route with this one. I know enough not to mess with black frosting. So I grabbed a tube of Wilton’s black icing, and fit a small piping tip on the end of it to make a fine webbing. I was surprised that the piping tip and coupler fit over the end of the tube! God decided to give me at least one win on this one! I’ll remind you that I am not artistic in any sense and drawing a straight line without a ruler will never be something I can do. But I did my best. I figured any imperfections that were made would be covered up with the action figures.

Not too shabby, right!? I was so happy to get this one out of the way. Looking back, this wasn’t the terrible experience I thought it might be. Yes, there were a few set backs and a few things that happened that I didn’t expect, but nothing that couldn’t be overcome. Turns out that each mistake I made actually led me to make a better cake! The inside of the cake was only supposed to be blue, but since I screwed up the size of the blue layers, I added in red layers which made the inside look amazing. And then the failure of the fondant gave me the opportunity to work with store bought fondant and to see the differences between the two. Also, it automatically gave me that beautiful red coloring that I really wanted.

What are some of your biggest baking fails and/or challenges? Do you have those bakes that intimidate the crap out of you?! I’d love to hear how you handle these issues too. Maybe we can learn something from each other!