It's Failure Friday Again!

So, I was determined to make a very cute, professional looking cake for my manager's birthday. She requested a white cake with white frosting and fresh strawberry filling.Unfortunately, I  do not have a tried & true white frosting recipe yet, and I was playing around with possibilities. I considered myself lucky to find a wonderful recipe that has a beautiful marshmallowy texture and exists in the perfect state between sweet and too sweet. Unfortunately, this frosting also melts very fast (but tastes wonderful when used as a dip for strawberries!). So, I hurriedly crumb coated the cake, put it in the freezer, and came back to do the second coat only to realize that this wasn't going to go the way I originally planned. 

You see, the night before when I baked the cakes I have to admit that I was in a bit of a rush. The day at work had been long and tedious, and I wanted to sit down and get some work done at the computer. Because of these events, I failed to coat two of the 9" pans with nonstick spray and ended up mutilating two cakes (yes, I know the word mutilating is dramatic). 

So, I had to salvage what I could (and save the rest for a second run of cake balls!). In the end, the filling turned out wonderfully, but was also dripping down the sides and mixing in with my wonderful white frosting. It all tasted VERY delectable, though. 

I realize that in order to make beautiful cakes, I must practice my cutting the cakes in layers...because that is what ultimately gets me in trouble. Ahhh! I need to invest in a cake leveler from Michaels!

Either way, I managed to kind of uphold a decent appearance with the simple elegance of strawberries. 

After my second Failure Friday post, I now feel like I am on a mission to tell the amateur bakers of whereverland that mistakes happen ALL of the time...especially near Fridays, as it seems. So, keep on baking  &hopefully all of my mistakes make you feel better about yours. :]

Dear Cake Pops, I apologize

On my list of skills, failing is somewhere in the top five. I'm sure many people have the same issue, and I can confidently say that I am particularly exceptional at doing things the wrong way 13,040 times before I can get it right. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that failing is a bad thing. The word definitely has a negative connotation & I have no intention of using it in that way. Failing, is just...well, annoying. As much as I would prefer to do everything right the first time, I am aware of the fact that I must fail in order to find my own way of doing things that satisfies me. That being said, I would like to present to you my failure of the day. (ha, maybe I should make this a weekly Friday post).

Once again, Bakerella has proved that she is magical in the kitchen. I attempted cake pops today & I not only ended up with smushed cake and white chocolate all over the place, but I also ended up with cake balls, deformed hexagons, and funny looking squares too. I suppose my first problem was not using ALL of the cake in the pan. I figured that the slightly hard bits wouldn't be a good idea to put in with the rest of the crumbs. Unfortunately, this threw off the ratio of cake to frosting, and I'm thinking that the frosting overwhelmed the cake and made it all sticky and harder to work with. I had to reshape the pops twice before I could put them in the white chocolate and then the lollipop sticks kept falling off & then everything was falling and smushing & it wasn't the cutest thing to see in a kitchen.

On the positive side, since I made SO many mistakes, I was privileged with eating all of them& OHMYGOODNESS, these cake balls/pop things are amazingfantasticdelicious. I used carrot cake for this batch, and I thought my tongue was going to jump for joy. I have never ever in my whole life eaten something so uniquely tasty. Okay, so I'm being dramatic, but it REALLY was so good.

I stopped after I did 20 cake balls because I was tired of seeing smushed cake & it was really sweet & I couldn't eat ALL of my mistakes.

Hope you have better luck!