My Ironic Cake

As some of you may know I enjoy decorating cakes. Well since June is the big birthday month in our family I usually end up making and decorating about 4 cakes. On Sunday we had a birthday party for my dad and his cake turned out very well. I made all the decorations the night before out of fondant, allowed them to dry, and then placed them on the cake. It turned out great except for the writing which was due to runny frosting consistency. Anyhow, the point of this story is that I had plenty of time to plan, prepare, and most important let my decorations dry.

On to yesterday, June 11, the fateful day Nathan was born. At 8:17 a.m. I get asked if I could make Nathan's birthday cake. Nathan is into skateboarding and last year I made him a cake decorated like a skateboard design he liked. So this year I Picked out a t-shirt of his with a graphic design I thought would make a good cake design. It was by a skate company called Zoo York. I decided I would make a pink lightning bolt, the yellow and black Zoo York symbol, and (even thought you can't see it in the picture) the word UNBREAKABLE which was across the bottom of the shirt.

I sketched out my designs and taped them to the back of some wax paper b/c I didn't have any parchment paper. Then I mixed up the royal icing piped the border of both shapes and made my letters. Then I flooded the shapes with thinned frosting and added the black dots to the Zoo York shapes. They turned out great, but there are three things to remember 1. Flooded royal icing should be given at least 12 hours to harden 2. I had to use wax paper & 3. The cake says unbreakable.

Four Hours Later. . . my flooded cake decorations were still quite soft. There was no way I was getting them off of the wax paper. However, my oven was still warm from baking the cake. I thought I would just pop the decorations in and the heat would help set them up more quickly. I greatly underestimated the residual heat in the oven. 20 seconds later the perfect pink lightning bolt had boiled and was more of a crystallized pink cloud. The Zoo York symbol, being larger, had only bubbled in one corner. I pulled the decorations out set them on the table to cool and quickly made a new lightning bolt. Since it was now 5:00 and I was suppose to deliver the cake at 7 I made the lightning a little different and didn't flood it in hopes it would be dry enough in 2 hours. I got my cake frosted and was ready to start putting the decorations on. I got out my thin spatula and tried to remove the Zoo York symbol from the wax paper. As it turns out the heat had not only boiled the sugar but had also melted the wax paper. The decoration crumbled as I tried to remove the paper. I made a new thinner one and hoped it would dry. At 6:00 I tried to remove the new lightning bolt but it had not hardened all the way and once again my decorations broke. I decided the best course of action would be to just cut the wax paper o fit the Zoo York symbol and place the entire thing on the cake. While I was carefully cutting away wax paper, Bobby was sitting at the kitchen table happily singing his ABC's. He turned to me and said "look mom, I'm eating my ABC's." I yelled, "Bobby, No." The U he was holding broke in half and he started crying. I now had the letters to say N BREAK.

So my cake had earned the name the Ironic cake. While it had said Unbreakable, it had broke not once but twice. After telling Bobby it was okay and letting him eat the broken lightning bolt as a peace offering. I placed the remaining letters on the cake, filled in the missing letters, drew a new lightning bolt right on the cake, and placed the wax backed Zoo York symbol on. It wasn't perfect or my best work but it was finished and Nathan knew exactly where the design came from and liked it.