I put the bottom layer together and it was thick- I mean THICK. But I just went along with it anyway. I had the cakes both decorated and ready to put together. The top layer looked like a lopsided marshmallow. But I thought once I had it in place I could decorate around the wonky-ness and hide the flaws. When I put a cake together, there are three or four dowels down inside the bottom layer to support the upper layers. The upper layer is on a round cardboard to help support it- so, I put the dowels in the bottom tier, then put the tip tier on (you with me so far?) Then, If the cake is being transported more than a block away- and by someone other than myself, I drive a longer dowel down through the middle of both cakes. I use a sharpened dowel to poke through the cardboard and then hammer it down in. So I did that- just the same as I always do- only... when I was done with it, the top layer had sunk about a half inch down into the bottom tier. I decided that the top tier just looked too wonky and if this was going to a paying customer that it needed to look good. Not like a half @$$ed thrown together monstrosity. So I thought I'd take the top layer off and redo it. When I pulled it off- the bottom tier was hollow! Hollow? What the heck????
When I pounded the sharpened dowel down through both tiers, instead of poking a hole, it just folded the cardboard up in between the support dowels and pushed it through, smashing the cake in the middle. I stared at it in shock. Then horror. Then asked my mom if she had a potted plant I could stick in it.
Needless to say- I started over.
The second go round turned out much better- for obvious reasons- but also just because I feel it's proportioned a little better than the first cake was. It's almost as if it was meant to be that the first cake bit the dust. I never do cakes in advance. I'm always scrambling at the last minute to do them but this time I started way ahead of time. Yeah... it's probably a good thing.
The little tiger I made was done a few days in advance so I didn't have to worry about him. but I re-baked and re-decorated the cake. The kid this is for likes sports so his mom wanted something sporty on it. The sports things are made from gum paste and hand painted. The football I rolled inside a paper towel so that it would have texture on it.
And here we have the finished product!
I think it turned out pretty darn cute! I hope they like it... I also hope his mom laughs- and not the opposite- when she sees the "bows" on the back of the cake. We were joking about putting bows on a boy cake and I guaranteed her there would be a bow on this cake somewhere. You can kinda see it in the penultimate picture... just a little black bow at the back on the ribbon. tee hee... silly.
