When I look in comparison

I can see I have some talent when I look at what I can find in the grocery store bakeries. However, I also know they are rushed in bakeries. It's quantity, not quality that counts. But seriously, who buys these things? Sure, they're only ten dollars or so, but really?  These belong on CakeWrecks.

These were all seen at a local grocery store near me recently.

 A butterfly I think.

 One is cookie monster, but the mouthless muppet? A "lips are sealed" Elmo?

 A blue polka dotted dinosaur?

 And for the girls, a pink polka dotted dinosaur, I think?

 OK, at least I know this one is a duck with some botoxed lips sitting on eggs, I suppose.

These were all one display, all the same day. I wonder how many got marked down on clearance?

I've had my flops. First there are the baking/icing flops. I had a cake where I accidentally added 1.5 times the milk. Ironically, these "wet cakes" as they were known were very popular for eating, but they were so tempermental for baking. Concave cake anyone?  Then I tried a few recipes from The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum and everything from that book I tried was dry, dry, dry. I gave that book away. I once tried a coconut cake that used 7 minute icing - that was horrible as the cream deflated immediately. And I once made Swiss meringue icing that tasted like I spread pure butter on the cake.

I had a few decorated cakes where I felt bad about as I couldn't quite get them right too. I didn't even take photos of one of them as I was so disappointed. I've dropped cakes and had to start over after midnight - that's always fun.

The one cake I worked so hard on and it just was one small disaster after another was for my mentee's 16th birthday party. Add to that she had to postpone her party due to a hurricane - another disaster.

That cake is here:

This is what I was able to salvage of the cake. This cake was much better until I tried to run a dowel through the entire cake. The cake plate for the top tier folded in half instead of being pierced by the dowel and plunged into the middle tier breaking it all apart - like smashed it. If you look, you will see the middle tier is shorter. That's because I had to dissassemble the cake and throw away the broken middle. I miraculously had enough cake for two of the three layers of the middle section to do over, but the rest of the cake suffered.

I wasn't able to get the icing smooth either. I guess I should be happy I didn't have to start it all over again at 2 am or something, but it wasn't a happy day.  I spent HOURS and HOURS on this cake and every step of the way was met with some mini disaster.  It's a somewhat mini cake - 6" base, 4" middle, 2" top. Those sizes are VERY hard to work with, but ugh... So glad it was a gift, but still not one of my finest hours in cake making. I don't even remember all the disasters that happened - but doweling the cake can be tricky!!!