Is it ok to fail?
Putting stripes onto a cake seems like a simple enough task, there are tools you can use and videos you can watch. So, when I was asked to do a cake with buttercream stripes on, I confidently assured the customer that I am more than capable to make perfect stripes, how hard could it really be?
I spent a couple of hours watching tutorials on how to perform the miracle of stripes. I then jumped along to Amazon.co.uk and bought some well-reviewed scrapers.
(.Cake Scraper Cake Decorating Comb Icing Smoother Fondant Spatulas Cake Edge Smoother Cream Scraper Cake Tools Pastry Cutter 8 Design Textures Baking Tools Kitchen Baking Mold DIY Tool Pack of 4).
So, when it came to the actual day of decorating, I was completely confident and happily started whipping up my “go to” buttercream.
Once the cake was iced completely with the white vanilla buttercream, I picked up my square ridged scraper and began creating the gaps on the cake for the blue buttercream. It was so much fun spinning and scraping, I was in the zone ready to create my masterpiece. With mild trepidation in my heart I put it in my cake fridge and set a timer for ten minutes as per the instructions of my research.
After 10 minutes I removed the cake from my fridge and carefully placed it on my trusty turn table. I then began to pipe my blue buttercream into each gap making sure that it was completely covered and even. I must admit it looked a mess!
I used the straight edged scraper and began spinning the cake and scraping lightly. The buttercream began to crumble, like it was cottage cheese falling off the cake. I didn’t know whether to scream or cry this isn’t what happened in the video tutorials. Should I peel it all off or keep going and hope for a miracle?
I decided to put on my big girl pants and keep going! I started turning the cake and pressed firmer with the scrapper, it seemed like the right thing to do.
I began to see stripes forming on the cake but couldn’t stop the cottage cheese type gravel as I scrapped. When it wasn’t improving I decided to angle the scrapper to hold it at a 45 degree angle instead of 90. This helped slightly but it was still not coming together. I took a step back and was feeling extremely flat and defeated.
After shedding a few tears and debating launching the cake out the window I sat back down and picked up my scrapper. The more I span it the more I could see the stripes forming, but at the same time the top was crumbling away. I have no clue what to do to make this better!!
It gets to a point when there isn’t enough of the contrast colour to keep scraping, so at this point I put down the scraper and started adding the little toys my client had requested.
For the first time ever, I was about to send out a cake that I was not 100% happy with. A million things ran through my head, would my whole business collapse, would the client hate me, would her son have the worst birthday ever. I was quickly spinning out and my husband had to bring me crashing back to the ground.
It turned out that the client’s son didn’t like the cake, he was expecting something so specific and I just couldn’t deliver that to him. However, his mum absolutely loved the taste of my cake, the buttercream, the sponge and how the two of them worked perfectly together.
So sometimes cakes are disasters, sometimes everything goes wrong, and you just can’t fix it. But the world doesn’t stop revolving and good things can come from a bad cake.
It was a much-needed lesson that you can’t just say yes to every cake design thrown your way. Sometimes you just have to be realistic with what you can do and learn the skills before you commit.
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CONFESSIONS OF A BAKER 