E turned six today.
He requested, just like last year, a train cake (although with a few modifications).
I am not what you would call a Pinterest-worthy mama. The train cake last year was a stretch, but it turned out surprisingly well. So I wasn’t too stressed when I woke up this morning and still had to bake and decorate said cake.
By 11:03 a.m. I was sitting on my kitchen floor sobbing because absolutely NOTHING was working with the cake. It stuck in the pan and broke when I tried to get it out; it crumbled whenever I tried to cut it; the icing glued to the crumbed edges and broke them off; the jelly roll sitting on top of a flat slice of cake looked nothing at all like the oil tanker of my imagination.
The cake was completely, utterly, fucked, and I no longer had any time in which I could fix it because I was out of cake mix and out of icing and P. was soon going to wake up from her nap.
And although I knew it was JUST a cake, when E. had woken up that morning he had been disappointed because he had thought that all of his presents would be out and wrapped just like at Christmas and when I’d taken him to school he’d said to me sorrowfully that “this hadn’t been how [he’d] imagined [his] birthday would start” and the thought that I would have to pick him up that afternoon and tell him I hadn’t been able to make him the train cake he wanted, the train cake that he’d picked the decorations for when he went with me to Bulk Barn, the train cake that he’d asked for months ago, just broke my heart.
So I sat on my floor and cried.
And then I called in the cavalry.
My youngest sister turned up with a slab cake and more icing (AND helium balloons including a giant silver E) and my mother turned up with one of those icing nozzle things and together we fixed the cake.
And E. loved it (except for the fact that I directed my mother to put the boiler too far away from the cab of the steam locomotive).
Some days it really does take a village.
What was your worst baking disaster? Were you able to fix it?
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Res Cogitatae 
The cake turned out beautifully AND it was filled with love because so many people worked on it. Plan B turned out to be better (although with more tears) than Plan A. My worst baking disaster was a house full of Josh’s co-workers and I forgot to put salt in the bread. I had worked on the bread for 8 hours. I ended up dumping it in the trash and slamming the baby gate as I left the kitchen, sobbing. Josh ran out to the store to buy bread. And I think about it every freakin’ time I make bread. I literally say to myself, “Melissa, did you add the salt?”
Once I made our youngest sister a chocolate bundt cake for her 25th birthday, the night before, so I could ice it the next day. She’s allergic to chocolate. I remembered in the morning, brought it to lab, and baked a vanilla version quickly when I got home.
Once I baked a zucchini loaf incorrectly and it was raw and hollow in the center and it collapsed. I tried to twice-bake it like biscotti and it only got weirder. Grad students will eat anything.
I once baked an “articulated chocolate raspberry cake” for E. for his second birthday and he took one look, yelled “I’m going to be sick!”, ran to the bathroom, and threw up (to be fair, that was not cake-related that we know).
Once I tried to bake muffins while in university but had no eggs or a leavening agent, so I used yogurt for both. Strawberry yogurt. The muffins came out as sickly sweet strawberry gummies, but gummies made of flour instead of sugar. Inedible, and I was an undergrad so my standards were low.
Baking is hard. I’ve had impossible-to-work-with crumbly cakes and they are SO frustrating.
So glad it turned out so well, and that the Calvary was able to storm over. Sad to have missed the festivities!
Ooh that ended up turning out beautifully!
aw so nice you got help to save the day! I was trying to bake cup cakes for a party but was distracted as we had friends over for breakfast beforehand and then they totally burnt! Luckily I had the remains of some other fruit cake so I didn’t show up totally empty handed
It looks great! Thankfully over here in my household the kids are still too young to be picky. They are just excited they get to eat cake!