Wedding Cake Disasters

A couple of years ago I was working in a bakery which had a small walk-in (who's isn't small?). It was a Saturday morning and there was a wedding cake in there awaiting delivery. I went in to the walk-in to fetch the mousse and very carefully reached over the cake to the top shelf where we kept the bowls of mousse. I grabbed one a pulled in towards me -------some dumb *** **** had put a FULL bowl of egg whites on the very top shelf and they poured ....
all........
over.......
the........
cake !!!! !!!!
:0 :0
Fortunately, the cake had been in there long enough to set up and we mopped it off with paper towels, added a few more rolled white chocolate cala lilies than they bargained for, a couple more touch ups and the cake went out looking fine!

Whew! I'd sure love to hear others !.......

[This message has been edited by LoriB (edited 01-21-2001).]

[m brown]

Had a 6 inch cake topper to deliver to a friend for his wife's birthday. Very lovely, yellow sponge, mousse, butter cream and roses. Well, I figured I would drop off the cake while making a cookie delivery after picking up my boys at school.
Long story short, even after I told them to keep their back packs on their laps, one ended up MASHING the cake to a fine pulp. There was NOTHING left, could not patch or even take back to the kitchen and re-ice......even the flowers were mangled to such an extent, they looked like wilted cabbage.

Never deliver anything with children in the car.
But don't you love that feeling of raw panic and the language that spills forth in a fine stream of pure obsenties?

[shroomgirl]

100* heat and pecan sponge with Grand Marnier butter cream 20 minutes it was a puddle.....I had 4 rectangle line layers of cake and a mass of fragrant goo. We refrigerated it and iced it again....so glad it wasn't decorated.

[momoreg]

About 8 years ago, I had made a cake for my boss' birthday, and as I was walking towards the walk-in, I didn't know the floors were being mopped, and I slid, fell, and the cake landed upside down. I sprained my ankle, but went ahead and made a smaller version, just quickly enough that I could catch a cab home and ice my ankle.

A couple years ago, I made a wedding cake for a close friend. She wanted it covered in fondant, with tiers floating an inch above the next tier. Of course, I was also invited to the wedding, so I made sure the cake was finished and in the walk-in several hours early. Just when I was about to go home and get ready, I noticed that the fondant was completely soaked, and dripping down that 1 inch gap. What a mess!! The humidity was more than I had ever experienced, and the kitchen was well over 100 degrees. All the handmade flowers got soaked too.

In the end she loved her cake. But I didn't look so good.

I find that the cakes that always give the most stress are the ones for people I know, and not for customers.

I get stressed just thinking about my own wedding cake, and my brother's. His was the most difficult cake anyone has ever asked for.

So far I've been really lucky with wedding cakes, no disasters. But a few months ago our museum of art was putting on a 'birthday party' for our city and expected several hundred people to show up. They asked several pastry chefs in town to donate 'birthday' cakes. After delivering my cake I was feeling pretty good about myself, having seen the 'competition' and thinking I'd outdone several of them.
Then the next day our catering manager (whose boyfriend happens to be top guy at the museum) comes up to me and says 'Hey, that was a great cake! Too bad you spelled (our city) wrong!" GEEZ!!!! I could've died!

hey Lori B.
wedding cake disaster:me, a lowly young kitchen worker, was called into work one night to decorated the fourth tier of a wedding cake that our bakery didn't know had to be decorated. None of them were available so my boss called me because none of the other cooks could decorate the cake. Over the summer i had worked in the bakery and gotten some decorating experience. I went in and had to decorate a top, 6-inch round tier in basketweave in about 20 minutes. I was nervous as heck since i had never done it. It came out not too bad though...with the dim lighting and all.