My Epic Cake Failure
I have a sad little story to tell.
My daughter just turned 8, and for her birthday, she wanted a polar bear cake. We had looked at a few different things online, and she saw an adorable polar bear cake and decided that’s what she wanted to do.
I knew it would take me out of my comfort zone a little, but I’ve made several cakes and figured I would be able to make something that didn’t look too bad.
This is also my daughter that has a dairy allergy, so I found a dairy-free cake recipe online, and decided to use a frosting recipe that uses shortening instead of butter, so it would be dairy free. The cake uses rice krispie treats for the arms and legs, but the creator says she leaves out the butter and just mixes rice krispies with marshmallow for a firmer treat to sculpt with, so I figured it was perfect.
Well, cake-making day came. I usually try to bake and freeze the cakes beforehand so I have less to do on assembly day, but with us traveling to our in-laws a couple days before it just didn’t happen.
I baked the cake, and the batter and scraps tasted great, so I was excited that this would be a tasty dairy-free cake for my little daughter. I made the fondant from scratch, whipped up the frosting, and made the rice krispies. I was confident that I would be able to pull this together.
My fondant pieces were super cute, and I was so proud of myself for thinking of using the measuring cups to help me get perfect circles. I gave myself a figurative pat on the back.
Then came time to actually stack the cake…..
This dairy free cake is super tasty- and also very moist and crumbly and definitely NOT a good stacking cake, as I’ve now learned the hard way. I started with a cute little body and head, but as you can see from the following picture, as time was passing everything was sinking down and flopping to the side. I definitely should have used more powdered sugar in my frosting to make it firmer, especially with how hot it’s been!
Any fixes I attempted just tore the cake apart, even after freezing it for 30 minutes!
At this point, I wanted to cry because it was getting late and I didn’t have time to go to the store and get fresh ingredients and start from scratch. I sat and thought for a minute and then realized I had plenty of rice krispies left, so I would just reform the body with all the cake and make a head out of rice krispies- because it should be much firmer and hold its shape right???
Wrong.
I started with this mashed up cake for the body. I literally just squished everything together because at this point, it was the only option.
I made the head and let it set for a while so it could get nice and hard.
I then put it through the dowel and used buttercream to attach all my fondant pieces. Already, the rice krispie head wanted to split in half. I added some frosting and more rice krispie treat in hopes that it would hold, but alas, it did not.
I gave up on the idea of trying to frost anything with a base layer and just piped what I could for the fur. My warm hand was definitely not helping. And as I piped, I could see the little bear slowly slumping more and more as the cake absorbed the frosting and the frosting settled and got warmer.
By the end I got a very chubby bottomed, sad looking little polar bear. His head was already falling apart!
At one in the morning, I actually got quite the laugh from the whole thing. I was cracking up because I realized that my little polar bear was a hot mess. I’ve made some pretty awesome cakes before if I do say so myself- and this one was definitely NOT one of them. A very humbling experience to say the least!
The next morning when I checked on our little polar bear friend he had completely fallen apart in the fridge. My sweet birthday said “That’s ok- as long as it tastes good!”
And it did :).
Next time, I’ll use a better cake recipe for stacking, more powdered sugar in my frosting, bake the cakes ahead of time so they have plenty of time to freeze (for stacking), and I’ll give myself more time for the rice krispie sculpting! Again, this was a humbling learning experience to say the least!
Have you ever had an epic fail like this? I’d love to hear your stories! Hopefully you got a chuckle out of mine!
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My daughter just turned 8, and for her birthday, she wanted a polar bear cake. We had looked at a few different things online, and she saw an adorable polar bear cake and decided that’s what she wanted to do.
I knew it would take me out of my comfort zone a little, but I’ve made several cakes and figured I would be able to make something that didn’t look too bad.
This is also my daughter that has a dairy allergy, so I found a dairy-free cake recipe online, and decided to use a frosting recipe that uses shortening instead of butter, so it would be dairy free. The cake uses rice krispie treats for the arms and legs, but the creator says she leaves out the butter and just mixes rice krispies with marshmallow for a firmer treat to sculpt with, so I figured it was perfect.
Well, cake-making day came. I usually try to bake and freeze the cakes beforehand so I have less to do on assembly day, but with us traveling to our in-laws a couple days before it just didn’t happen.
I baked the cake, and the batter and scraps tasted great, so I was excited that this would be a tasty dairy-free cake for my little daughter. I made the fondant from scratch, whipped up the frosting, and made the rice krispies. I was confident that I would be able to pull this together.
My fondant pieces were super cute, and I was so proud of myself for thinking of using the measuring cups to help me get perfect circles. I gave myself a figurative pat on the back.
Then came time to actually stack the cake…..
This dairy free cake is super tasty- and also very moist and crumbly and definitely NOT a good stacking cake, as I’ve now learned the hard way. I started with a cute little body and head, but as you can see from the following picture, as time was passing everything was sinking down and flopping to the side. I definitely should have used more powdered sugar in my frosting to make it firmer, especially with how hot it’s been!
Any fixes I attempted just tore the cake apart, even after freezing it for 30 minutes!
At this point, I wanted to cry because it was getting late and I didn’t have time to go to the store and get fresh ingredients and start from scratch. I sat and thought for a minute and then realized I had plenty of rice krispies left, so I would just reform the body with all the cake and make a head out of rice krispies- because it should be much firmer and hold its shape right???
Wrong.
I started with this mashed up cake for the body. I literally just squished everything together because at this point, it was the only option.
I made the head and let it set for a while so it could get nice and hard.
I then put it through the dowel and used buttercream to attach all my fondant pieces. Already, the rice krispie head wanted to split in half. I added some frosting and more rice krispie treat in hopes that it would hold, but alas, it did not.
I gave up on the idea of trying to frost anything with a base layer and just piped what I could for the fur. My warm hand was definitely not helping. And as I piped, I could see the little bear slowly slumping more and more as the cake absorbed the frosting and the frosting settled and got warmer.
By the end I got a very chubby bottomed, sad looking little polar bear. His head was already falling apart!
At one in the morning, I actually got quite the laugh from the whole thing. I was cracking up because I realized that my little polar bear was a hot mess. I’ve made some pretty awesome cakes before if I do say so myself- and this one was definitely NOT one of them. A very humbling experience to say the least!
The next morning when I checked on our little polar bear friend he had completely fallen apart in the fridge. My sweet birthday said “That’s ok- as long as it tastes good!”
And it did :).
Next time, I’ll use a better cake recipe for stacking, more powdered sugar in my frosting, bake the cakes ahead of time so they have plenty of time to freeze (for stacking), and I’ll give myself more time for the rice krispie sculpting! Again, this was a humbling learning experience to say the least!
Have you ever had an epic fail like this? I’d love to hear your stories! Hopefully you got a chuckle out of mine!
Camille Hoffmann
Weekly Newsletter Contributor since 2014
Email the author! camille@dvo.com
Sources:
- https://chelsweets.com/polar-bear-cake/
