BAKE A CAKE: A HALLOWEEN FAIL
Last Halloween, I had a Pinterest fail. My goal was to make a gorgeous 3-layer cake colored like a piece of candy corn. It tasted right, but as you can see, it fell flat. Here are a few of the lessons I learned:
People will always be nice when they can tell you made an effort. It doesn’t help when you (the baker) are saying how bad it is while everyone is eating it. No one made fun of me for my lopsided cake, they were just happy to eat it. So let go and eat up!
It is practically impossible to frost a cake once you’ve cut it. I thought I had to make each cake layer a perfect cylinder with a flat top, so I cut the tops off. See image below for how that turned out.
Wait for the cakes to cool before handling them. Seriously. Any recipe will tell you this, but they really mean it. They can “crack”, and when the inside of the cake is exposed, you run into lesson #2—and using frosting as glue doesn’t work so well.
Stack your cakes the right way. For the first layer, flip the cake upside down (bottom up). For the second layer, put the cake right side up (bottom down). For the third layer, flip the cake upside down (bottom up). This way, the cake is flat in the right places, domed on top, and stacked properly.
Use enough frosting. People are eating cake, so don’t pretend that you’re helping them to cut calories by using less frosting (plus, it helps to keep it moist). Frost it right.
