Exploding Money Shot Chocolate Cake Disaster

Do you see that cake right there in photo above? Yeah…I made that. Am I proud of it? Yes…I am! You can laugh at me all you want to, but that cake was absolutely delicious! You have to be asking yourself, “What happened to that cake??” Well, I’m so

glad you asked! You see, not everything is as you see in the kitchen. Not everything goes perfectly according to plan with me. I’m a normal human being who makes mistakes, and this is no different. I thought I had everything planned down to perfection! You see, I was doing a product review and decided to make this delicious recipe for a Chocolate cake filled with a Captain Morgan’s spiced rum and chocolate ganache filling, and topped with a homemade butterscotch icing. You can gain 20 pounds by just saying it! Anyway, try as we may…not everything goes according to plan.

I laid out my recipes, and started putting all of the pieces to the puzzle for the cake together. The butterscotch was simmering, and smelling absolutely delicious! I made my ganache and added in the Captain Morgan’s spiced rum. Taste tested…and it was pure silk on my tongue. However, I knew my ganache needed to cool at room temperature for at least 4 hours. Yes…4 hours. I could have cheated and chilled it in the fridge, but it wouldn’t have had the same effect. I made my cake batter, and sprayed my new Flip-n-Fill pans with coconut oil spray…filled up the pans…and placed them in the oven. Now, this whole time I knew I was forgetting to do something…but I couldn’t quite figure it out.

Fast forward to 24 hours later. I allowed the cake to stay in the pans over night to completely cool. I then made the butterscotch icing. Alrighty, I am now ready to put the pieces to my puzzle together!

So, I take a pairing knife around the edges of the cake pan…gave it a couple of taps on the bottom and was trying to prepare it to come out of the cake pan molds. The cakes wouldn’t budge out of the pans. I tried wiggling and more tapping. Nothing. Nada. No movement. So, I took my pairing knife and started to slowly lift up the edges a little bit at a time. Then it dawned on me…I FORGOT TO FLOUR THE PANS! Ugh. I almost cried. The bottoms and edges of the cake stuck to the pans…and this photo is what I was stuck with. If you look closely, you can see where it broke off into 3 1/2 ish pieces on top! Even the poor sides were crumbling where I broke it lol!

My Kitchen Fail Icing Dilemma

Mind you, I am bound and determined to make something work. I needed this cake and recipe for a product review with a deadline, and I couldn’t disappoint. Then I came up with a new mantra: Icing = the duct tape of cakes. The wheels in my brain started turning…and then I came with the following product pictured below.

Doesn’t it look JUST beautiful?? I really did the best icing job that I could do, but then the one side of my cake just spilled over and couldn’t handle any of the weight of even the little bit of icing on the side.  Now, I actually cut a small wedge of the cake to take with another photo shoot. I am STILL bound and determined to make this cake work for my product review photos! I need something pretty to show to my sponsors that I can bake AND I can take a nice photo lol. After taking about 40 to 50 different shots, I was finally able to come up with something that I was proud to show off to everyone. Here are the two photos that I took:

There’s that slice of missing cake that I took to get a decent photo out of it. Oh the joy…and again, it was delicious lol.

The whole time I’m trying to take photos, I have my Stephen just laughing away at me in knowing that I’m trying to take the best angles that I can and make it all work.

Am I proud of this cake disaster? Absolutely, I am! It just goes to show that not everything goes according to plan, and you just have to make things work. I was able to make a cake disaster turn into a, what I think is, a beautiful photo. I am NOT a great photographer, in fact…I am a super amateur. But this is what life is about. It’s about taking something “ugly” in our lives, and make it into something beautiful. We all have things we have to deal with, and it’s up to us on how we deal with it all. We’re certainly not perfect, but it doesn’t mean we can’t try our best to deal with our situation at hand. I had my options. I could have started over. I could have thrown it away. My pure determination made me want to continue doing something with what I had.

So, here’s to all of our cake disasters in life…and how we can take a “Money Shot” photo of it…and spread a little beauty.