Okay... so I totally love to bake.... but I am still pretty novice in the world of making 'decorated' cakes, which was completely evident when I worked on making a baby shower cake and 5 dozen sugar cookies this past week for my friend Christy's baby shower. Although I was worn out and a little stressed by the time the baking and decorating was over... all-in-all, it turned out to be a pretty good experience and I managed to have a little fun! :) And, most importantly... I learned A LOT... some of which was learned the hard way.
Here are the top 5 things I learned.....
5.) There's a reason I had never used shortening when making icing before (I'm a butter girl myself). It's basically the pits... Yes, it does allow you to make almost snow white icing... but for some reason I found the shortening not meshing well with my food coloring. While piping on the Giraffe's fur (see pic below) it was almost like little white specs appeared.... weird. I'm sticking to butter for now on!
4.) Dark non-stick cookie sheets burn the bottoms of your cookies! All my life I have used the darkly coated non-stick cookie sheets to bake cookies... but I can officially say that's now a thing of the past. I had a Target gift card I had been saving from my Birthday in July and decided to spend it on a set of 3 air-bake baking sheets. Ahhhhh.. no more burnt cookie bottoms! To put it in perspective... I baked the sugar cookies for 5 minutes on the dark cookies sheets and 8 1/2 minutes on the air bake.... Although it took less time on the dark... time saving was not worth the burnt bottom result.
3.) Planning actually works! I made a 'schedule' for myself so I could properly manage my time baking so many cookies and a large two layer cake. Since I work full-time, work out for an hour after work each day, attend Bible study and attend Ross's soccer games, I did not have a whole lot of time left over for baking; therefore, each night I made a check list of things I needed to accomplish. (i.e. mixing the cookie dough to let it refrigerate overnight, baking, mixing icing, icing cookies, mixing cake batter, baking the layers, assembling the cake and decorating.) It worked for the most part... at least until I ruined 2 of the 3 cake layers (see 2. and 1.). Always schedule in time to fix your mistakes!
2.) Always have the right tools at hand. As most know, when you bake a layered cake it is important to bake the layer, remove it from the pan and cool completely (top side up) on a cooling rack; therefore, as any baker would, I removed it from the pan, plopping it on a large cookie sheet and then went to flip it back over so it was sitting top side up on a cooling rack.... of course, it did not work because I did not have a cooling rack large enough. I thought that just putting two racks together would work just fine.... obviously I was wrong (and I even had a little feeling that I was wrong before I even tried.) The end result.... chunks of destroyed cake all over the kitchen table (layer number 1 destroyed). Trust your instincts... and never flip a cake onto 2 separate racks that you are trying to hold together.
(This is what the cake looked like after I picked up all of the pieces off of the table and put them in them back in the cake pan.... at least it still tasted good!)
1.) Sliding a 12 x 18 cake layer on top of another 12 x 18 cake layer is a 2 person job! Alas, the most important lesson learned. If the cake is not centered when originally slid onto the bottom layer... there's no use in trying to make it budge. After baking layer 3 (which was to be the top layer) I turned it over to let it cool and of course, a small portion of the cake stuck to the pan. I managed to 'fix' that problem but faced an even larger one when I did a very poor job of sliding the 2nd layer on top of the first... it was crooked and falling apart, which certainly was not going to work. End result: layer number 2 (the 3rd layer I baked) destroyed and in the garbage. (I did not take a picture of this phase because I really was stroking out at that point.) Always have a helper on hand to call upon if needed!
(A picture of Christy's crib quilt that I mimicked the cake after... and a picture of the final product! Along with a picture of Christy and I at the end of her baby shower.... I think the day turned out to be a success!)
