Staying in the touch with the WI Learish: Acacia's 10 '11

What can I say? Double digits! Time to party. A swimming pool party was selected this year and of course the request for a swimming pool cake. Since there was no swimming pool cake in the book of cakes that mom gave me 10 years ago I had to turn to the expert. Julianne surfed the web and came up with what appeared to be relatively easy (seeing how I do not have any actual cake decorating tools as she does). Acacia approved of the cake and off we went to purchase teddy grahams and peanut butter M&M's.

OK - so as you can see, there was a swimming pool cake. Looks easy enough, right? Well, little story here. When cakes bake they kind of bake with a dome affect. So, if you take the cake out of the pan and place it upside down on a plate the center of the cake hits the plate first as it is the highest point of the dome. The outer edges are kind of suspended in mid air. So, when you place two round cakes on top of each other they touch in the center but there is a large gap all the way around the outside of the cake. So, when I cut out the little center part of the top cake to make room for the pool (filled with jello) the top cake then had nothing to hold it in place and it completely fell off the cake. This did not happen all at once mind you. The cake was completely decorated and ready to be filled with jello. I left it like that over night and found it apart the next AM. This was a terrible set back and I had no idea how to correct for this. Back to the expert ... "Well, didn't you level the cakes?" Non expert ... "Um - level??"

Back to the store for more of everything. So, instead of having Friday evening to relax I had to bake, cool and decorate this cake. I was a little stressed (OK - pissed). But, in the end it came out lovely! :)