Kira is an awesome baker. Conner and I, sadly, are not. Every year the boy scout troop puts on a cake baking contest. Dads and sons only. No help from other, more talented, members of the family.
We had a great idea. We really did! The thought was to recreate the annual pine wood derby car racing contest. Bake a cake, cut it with a downward slope, cover in icing, apply fondant, place cars and trophies on top. How hard can that be? Well, actually it can be really hard :).
The fondant was the first disaster. It seemed really hard out of the package and we couldn't roll it, so we added water to make it more malleable. Bad idea we tried to fix by adding flour. Another bad idea. We decided to scrap the fondant and just use white icing for the main cake and chocolate icing for the piping of lanes and other decorative twists.
The cakes baked up really well. I was surprised! Unfortunately, taking them out of their pans didn't go as well. Big chunks broke off. We figured we would "glue" them back on with the icing.
Stacking and shaping the cakes went fairly well. We tried to ice between the cakes, but quickly realized it was a dumb idea. The icing just broke the cake apart. Conner made some comment about my skills. I handed him the knife to spread the icing, waited 10 seconds and then we both laughed. His skills were equal to mine. Not good!
With the icing between the cake going badly, we pondered icing the outside of the cake. We decided to go big, use plenty of icing and see what may come. Well, a disaster came. The icing wouldn't stick and pulled the cake apart no matter how we tried to patch it.
2 minutes in, the end was near. Conner embedded the cars in the icing, pushed the trophies into the cake and we both agreed this was not to be our year.
Next year we will invite Kira home, ask her for some sage advice, spend a weekend practice baking, and come out stronger and wiser.
Maybe it's time to pay more attention when watching the "Ace of Cakes" on the Food Network :)
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