AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH! Oh my gosh did this cake cause me nightmares and a weekend of sleepless nights!! You know, baking is chemistry, really and sometimes you get it right, either if you know what you're doing or if you actually follow the instructions.
In this case, the goal was to surprise @jasperdick with a birthday cake for both him (Turning 40) and lovely little Maddy (Turning 4). What a cool coincidence. so, I thought some how the cake would just come together and be glorious, right?
Eeeeeeeek!
So I know my chocolate cake recipe is flop proof, and I creamed the wet ingredients together so nicely...
but I messed with it. I don't mean in a bad was, it was delicious, just impossible to ice. it just fell apart.
I had to swap out and skimp on some ingredients, like the apricot jam, which would have made a difference and possibly an extra egg to bind it better. I did find some honey and maple syrup to replace the jam, but there wasn't really enough left in the bottles:(
I did add extra baking powder and baking soda, and since I learned how baking soda reacts with a tiny amount of vinegar, I added a teaspoon of this lovely dark sherry vinegar that has been hiding in m cupboard. I did this because I have had a little trouble getting my chocolate cake to rise (maybe I'm making too many layers or I'm taking it out of the pans too early as cooling to fast can make a cake flop). Anyway, I thought I'd give it a go, and while it did help a little, it made the cake SO FLUFFY that it was impossible to ice!!
I also could have used the assistance of a piping bag or my piping guns, but as luck would have it, my piping bag was... gross and needed a good soak in bleach and quite a bit of scrubbing (thank you @zakludick it looks BEAUTIFUL now).
Come to think of it, I also did not refrigerate the layers before assembling which can make a massive difference.
As I stacked the cake layers, I already had problems with the filling icing. The cake was just coming apart. I had to be so careful.
Eventually, after hours of slaving... I decided to put the whole thing in the freezer and go back to sleep... considering this whole escapade with the icing started at 3am.
So at 6 or 7am, I'm not sure, I was so tired at this point and covered in chocolate, I had a bath and prepared for a peaceful sleep.
When I finally settled down at 9am, our neighbours (a troublesome B&B) decided to send in a construction team (On a Sunday - which is illegal) and who had absolutely no consideration for any of the neighbours. It appeared that the workers had brought their girlfriends with them, set up a Boom box with music so loud it was rattling the windows. Oh god did I want to cry!!
Zak went to go speak to them, which sort of helped. At least they switched the music off...
So the girlfriends all just sat on the ground in a row on their cell phones for the rest of the time … think they were expecting to have a party at the vacant B&B and we crashed it.
The construction work continued all day though. I hope the owner gets a blood fine. Anyway....
So I gave up on trying to sleep and had a brilliant idea while I was lying in bed desperately trying to fall asleep... what if I could pour on the icing??
GANACHE to the RESCUE!!!
So, I melted two bars of dark chocolate and added all the remaining buttercream and I poured and spooned the icing on the cake (with @zakludick's help!), covering it completely. It looked pretty cool on the end,
I added Astros and made the heart cupcakes stand out by giving them a boarder of little tiny hearts, which looked quite cute!
And then for the end, for glitz and glam, I still had décor left over from my 40th which I repurposed rather cleverly! I had two 40 stands, so I just cut the zero off one of them for Maddy and put the other one on for Jasper. The décor was bright pink 🤣🤣🤦♀️🤦♀️ but I think I can be forgiven under the circumstances, plus,, it was a sharing cake, you know, for Maddy too! 😜⭐❤️🍫
I am still awaiting the results of the taste test, but since I pinched a cupcake at 3am (to test the sponge, of course! tee hee!) and I ended up eating a lot of what fell off the cake while I tried to ice it, I know it was delicious - And I am sure the ganache/ buttercream made it even more yummy! So, would say, I turned a disaster into a SUCCESS!!
