My little sister is having a baby and I felt blessed to be a part of her baby shower and to have a hand in the decorating and event planning. Overall it went off well and things seemed to run relatively smoothly, but I'm sure if you asked around someone could find something to fix. Isn't that always the way? Things can always be better! :)
The cake was vanilla with vanilla buttercream in the top tier. The bottom tier was chocolate with Mint Oreo buttercream filling (my sister craves Mint Oreos). The top tier transported nicely, but the bottom tier got a few cracks in the buttercream that bothered my inner perfectionist. I accidentally bought the wrong size box for the bottom tier and used straws (big mistake) to insert in the bottom of the cake and keep it from sliding inside the box. It "sort of " worked. However one of the straws pushed into the cake, left a small hole and cracked my icing. ACK.
I have been spoiled by my all-shortening/dairy-free icing and the cracks are a result of the butter crusting and the cake being transported over 2 hours in a mini-van not designed for this sort of thing! So what does every smart cake decorator do in the face of certain doom? Covers her cracks and faults with pretty decorations! And that's what I did. I used the bow placement to hide the biggest crack where the straw pushed into the cake. I added flowers to the bottom tier to cover some other imperfections and I rethought my design slightly to make it work. All the decorations are made from fondant and the borders are piped in buttercream. I made my fondant bows ahead of time so they could dry enough to be man handled as I polka-dotted them the morning of the shower. The piped ruffle with buttercream "ric-rac" looked really polished (I was surprised it worked so well). I put a lot of time and thought into this cake for my sister and I think that paid off. I would say I've improved my piping skills since the last cake and I will call that a huge win! Overall the design was not exactly as I originally planned but the end result honored my intent and (I hope) honored my sister and my new baby niece on the way. Happy Caking!
