Every little princess needs an amazing cake for her birthday, right? After making a Texas Longhorns cake for Landon's birthday in February, his mom asked if I would make the cake for his sister's birthday in April. She didn't have anything specific in mind and didn't care what I came up with - I love and hate those opportunities. If I have a clear picture in mind of what I want to do, I love the freedom of expression I have in making a cake for someone. But when I'm stumped, I hate it. I always worry that what I come up with won't be what someone had hoped for, or that I'll try to do more than I know how to do and make a mess of it.
It took me several days to decide on this, and I only started to develop that 'clear picture of what I wanted' after Kim did some googling for me and found some cute pictures for me to work from. One of the pics she found was cupcakes with cute little princess crown wrappers, and I was able to build from there. The first step was to find the wrappers. This led to my first mistake and then the first lesson I learned with this experience. I called every store in town to see if anyone had the wrappers - I'd seen Wilton kits before with the wrappers and cute little decorations for the cupcakes so I didn't figure they'd be hard to find. After spending a couple of hours on the phone, however, I found myself, once again, relying on my dear friend Google and trying to find a template to use. And, thankfully, I did. So I bought some cardstock and printed, cut and decorated 23 princess crown cupcake wrappers. The mistake here? Calling around instead of driving around. The day before the party - after all of the wrappers had been made - I found exactly what I had been looking for in a local craft store. I wasn't happy. So the lesson learned is to never ask someone to check on something for you if you want a definite answer.
The round cake was mistake #2, which turned out to be one of the best mistakes I've made to date. My original plan was to make a 2 layer dark chocolate fudge cake filled with fresh strawberries and chocolate ganache. HOWEVER, poor planning on my part led me to realize that I did not have the 8+ hours for the ganache to sit in the fridge and firm up. So plan B was to make some devil's food pudding to put in between the layers. The mistake here? No milk. Again, poor planning on my part. So I had to develop a Plan C. I tried out a recipe for meringue frosting and it tasted great - but it wasn't stiff enough to frost the entire cake with. Not wanting to waste it, I used it to fill the cake, and then added the sliced strawberries. I frosted the cake with American buttercream (aka - Crisco and butter buttercream) and used Swiss buttercream for the rosettes on the top of the cake and for the stars on the bottom. I added some crystal garland that I picked up in the wedding department at the store around the bottom of the cake, and carefully placed pale pink sugar pearls in the center of each star around the bottom and in the ivory rosettes on the top of the cake. I was pretty happy with the finished product and probably could have left it at that, but decided to add the princess wands and the tiara when we got to the party. Turned out to be a good decision because it really gave the cake a more finished look.
I was so excited about how the cake and cupcakes looked, but I was worried about the taste. What good will it do for me to make cakes people like to look at, if no one wants to eat them? Turns out that the mistake I'd made with the meringue frosting causing me to use it as the filling for the cake was a good move. I think, at the end of the party, there were 2 cupcakes left and one slice of cake that Landon's mom had managed to save. Everyone loved it - and raved about the taste. One woman even said to me, 'I usually order my cakes from
So what's the lesson you should take away from this? First I would have to say it's 'Don't put too much pressure on yourself.' Secondly, I think think biggest lesson would be to remember that what you consider a mistake or a colossal disaster probably aren't as bad as you think. You're always going to be more critical of your own work than anyone else will be. So don't make excuses or apologize. Show off your finished product just like you would your child's artwork. Oh - and don't forget that people don't know what picture you have in your head - so they'll never know if you 'screw it up' or not. Don't let your self criticism take away from someone else's praise.
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