Butterfly Overload

Getting together with my Women of Worth Bible Study Sisters is always a joy. For this particular meeting, I wanted to surprise the girls with a cake to celebrate all our March birthdays, especially since I didn't get a chance to make one for Teresa two weeks earlier. This cake is a great example of all the things that can go wrong when you're a cake decorator. The first mishap was with the whipped cream frosting. My supplier changed brands on me, and I was so used to adding a cup of milk to the whipped cream that I was in automatic pilot when I added it to this batch. Unfortunately, this new brand does NOT call for milk, so the frosting was a mess. The best I could do was cover the cake with it and hope for the best. Luckily, I bought a can of vanilla frosting at the grocery store to do the flowers, so all was not lost. As much as I'd like to take credit for the idea for the sunflowers and butterflies, I cannot. I got them from my "Hello, Cupcake!" cookbook. (I also have book number two: "What's New, Cupcake?") The flower centers are Oreo cookies, and the petals are made from canned vanilla frosting with yellow and orange food coloring added. I also set aside some frosting to do ladybugs and leaves, but skipped due to running out of time. I made the butterflies out of candy wafers. It's always good to re-read the directions, which was mistake number two, because I couldn't figure out why the wafers were turning black and nasty after microwaving for 20 seconds. I bought some canned chocolate frosting to do the butterflies' bodies, but ran out of time for those. Luckily, I included the bodies when I was piping the wafers, so they turned out okay. To make the butterflies, I put about a cup of candy wafers into an unsealed Zip-loc bag, nuked for 10 seconds, kneaded the wafers, then repeated until melted. I snipped off a corner of the bag and freehanded the butterflies onto wax paper, using the tip of the bag to add texture. Then I quickly sprinkled some cake decors on the wings before they completely cooled. Within minutes, the butterflies had cooled enough to remove from the wax paper and put in a sealed container and into the fridge. (I made them the night before.) After cooling the cakes, I cut the bottom layer in half and added a chocolate pudding filling. Mistake number three was to not support the cake with dowel rods like I usually do (did I mention I was in a hurry?). Mistake number four was not having the cake level on the back seat, causing the entire cake to slide off its base, as the last several photos will attest. The cake was too tall to put the cover on it, but luckily I covered it loosely with plastic wrap so that the seat didn't get covered in frosting. I apologize in advance for the poor picture quality, but the first four photos were taken with my cell phone, which does not do well indoors as seen by the lines going across the pictures. I had forgotten my camera at Teresa's two weeks ago, so I took photos of my wrecked cake after I arrived. I make the batter using 2 boxes of Duncan Hines Devils Food cake mix (do not use instructions on box!), 2 cups of REAL mayonnaise (NOT LITE), 6 eggs, and 2 cups of water. Mix for about 60 seconds on medium speed, pour into 13x9 inch well-sprayed pan (actually, I use wax paper for the bottom and long sides and spray the short sides), and bake at 325 degrees for 65 minutes. Of course, you may need to adjust your time depending on your oven. I normally put aluminum foil on the rack below the cake because it WILL overflow (trim off the top to get the cake level before you invert it onto your cardboard/cake holder), but in this case, I poured enough into an additional 8" square pan for the upper layers that I didn't have any overflow. Here's the cake after adding the top two layers and covering with my flopped frosting. Here's after I added the flowers.

I hadn't intended to put this many butterflies on the cake, because there are obviously too many, but many guests were expected at this meeting and I didn't want to have to carry another container with all the leftover butterflies, so I stuck them all on the cake (hence the title "Butterfly Overload").

After arriving at Teresa's.

On the right side where all the green frosting is, is where the cake slid off. I pushed it back up before taking these.

Yeah, this is definitely an entry for Cake Wrecks! LOL Oh well, at least it TASTED good! And the butterflies were a hit!

P.S. Sorry about the paragraph breaks ... can't figure out how to fix them, and I'm too tired to care!