How I ended up doing surgery on a cake.

As some of you might know, last Friday was my mom-in-law's birthday. I had been waiting for the day to finally bake a cake and experiment a bit. And so I used this recipe that I found thanks to the amazing Ashley (if you like good food and travel, you will love her place). The plan was to decorate it using this tutorial by Marcela, showing us her talents. First of all, instead of making Strawberry shortcake cake, I modified the recipe until it became Raspberry-Strawberry-Cinammon Shortcake. Oh yes. Raspberry is my favorite fruit, so I added them to the mix of macerated fruit.

 And I also went on to add cinammon both in the dough for the sponge cake and in the icing. The cake itself turned out quite well.

 But when it came to decorating, disaster occurred. You see, I don't think before I do. I just do stuff. Because I think I have it all figured out in this crazy mind of mine. So, I knew perfectly well that when rolling the fondant I had to somehow manage to make an even circle. That's where trouble started, because I was only able to make some kind of square deformed oval.

 Still, I made my measurements and was convinced I had enough surface to cover my 8 inch cake + sides. I had it all ready and cheese-buttercreamed,

Ok, here the sides were still not ready

....when as I carefully put the fondant over it, I noticed that one side was missing quite a bit of fondant covering. I messed up. At this point the fondant was covered in buttercream on one side so I could not roll it again. You are also not supposed to pull or stretch anymore at this stage. I was not even sure I was allowed to take it off and try to place it again over the cake, this time evenly, and I didn't want to mess up any further. So I had to find a solution. I put a fondant patch on the missing spot. Faux-pas.  I know. Marcela, don't yell at me. And then my supposed-to-be lovely cake had a huge ugly scar on the side. At which moment I called the boy, almost in tears. I told him; "you know, I think the cake will taste delicious, but I effed up... it's not pretty, it has a patch". And then... I thought. Well, if I can close a cow after an abomasum torsion, then surely, I can fix this cake.

 And so, I started making fondant flowers, that were required in the tutorial, and Eureka... instead of following the lovely Marcela's instructions I started placing them in the same way I would place surgical staples or stitches.

(Source)

And then I continued with the pattern. And added the flower centers, and some greenery to resemble wild weeds. In the end, I liked it.

 And look, the flowers kind of  resemble Summer lilacs, or if you are into fancy names, Queen's gilliflowers:

(Source)

But what's most important mom-in-law loved it, and everyone said it was delicious.

 If you want to see the whole process, in photos,