Flower with Stem Cake

Made for my daughter Marissa's 4th birthday party, this cake was inspired by several I saw on this site......I just combined the different ideas to make what I needed.

I borrowed some candy molds from a friend and made little white chocolate lollipops (tinted blue and yellow to match the cake) as party favors. My first time making such things....they were lots of fun and turned out super cute. My kids loved them!

So on to the cake. A couple of days before the party, I baked a yellow cake - about half of the batter made 12 smallish cupcakes, the rest of it went into a 9"round pan. If I had an 8", I would have used that, but I don't. I also baked a chocolate cake in a 13 x 9" pan. All of these were wrapped in foil and frozen once cooled.

I had to trim down the circle to get the cupcakes to fit around it appropriately. I set one cupcake aside with the intention of making a ladybug out of it.....but by the time I got finished with the rest of the cake, I was too exhausted (36 weeks pregnant here) to put out the effort, so that cupcake didn't get used.

I cut the stem and leaves out of the chocolate cake, using only about half of the cake. I had almost an entire 13 x 9" pan filled with leftover scraps from both cakes!

I decided to use a true crumb coat this time, after doing extensive reading about the tremendous benefits. Well, I apparently did something very wrong, because it was nothing but frustrating and nearly tear-inducing for me. I made extra of the (high humidity) Wilton Buttercream frosting and thinned it with some milk to make it easily spreadable. I covered all of the cake with a light coat and was very pleased with how it seemed to seal in the crumbs.

However.

Due to the nature of how my cake is set up with lots of pieces, and my cake board is HUGE, I couldn't fit it into the fridge, as is recommended. But many websites said that the crumb coat would set up on its own in a couple of hours.

Ha.

Mine didn't. After letting it sit for at least 2 hours, it was still completely wet to the touch.

The problem with this is that now, when I'm trying to complete the cake, not only is there white, semi-slimy frosting on there that got mixed in with my colored frosting and compromised the tint, the cake is no longer frozen and therefore was so fragile in some places (particularly on the stem and leaves) that it was falling apart and creating more crumbs than I could imagine.

I have never been so agitated with a cake in my life.

Thankfully, I managed to pull it all together somehow (while hanging on to my sanity by a thread) and the end result was a lovely cake that my daughter adored and my husband declared as one of his top 2 favorites of the decorated cakes I've ever made (which is about 12 cakes, that I can remember).

I gave the whole flower part a coating of light yellow frosting, drew the outline of the flower petals and center with a toothpick, and piped in the colors with one of the star tips. I added the yellow lines (not intending for it to look like the sun, but it kinda does) and also piped blue stars around the bottom of the cake.

The stem is obviously a light green, with a darker green for the outline and piping around the edges.

So there you have it. I will only attempt a crumb coat again if I had the room in my fridge to chill the cake. Unless anyone has any other tips that might help me avoid such disaster the next time.

Thank you.