Trial Birthday Cake: ROUND 1

A few weeks ago I started down the path of making a trial birthday cake. Baking is never an issue for me but I have no skills or patience when it comes to decorating. I got a couple books at the library, read several things online and decided, I can do this! LOL... LOL... LOL....

Let me just say, I haven't given up but my trials have been funny to say the least.

My goal is to make a Mickey Mouse Club House Cake for Thomas's Birthday that is in two weeks.

Round 1:

How do I make the Club House part that would sit on top the cake?
This would be the cute house shaped like Mickey's body and head. It also has a hand, foot and slide. I decided to try to use rice crispy treats and wrap them in fondant icing to give them that nice smooth color and shape.

Found a recipe to make my own fondant. Making the fondant requires lots of patients as it takes a while to need until it forms as it should. Shockingly enough, I did it. I got it to shape and turn out just like the picture. Now it was time to role it so it could be applied to my rice crispy catastrophe (I will get to that later). Ha, I don't care how much shortening and confection sugar I added to the table surface it just kept sticking. I was getting so mad because I couldn't lift it with out it ripping. Eventually I just took it and smooshed it onto the rice crispy shaped head. It stuck, just didn't look very nice. (Remember that whole patience thing, yeah mine were gone)

RICE CRISPYS PART
I can not ever remember making a good batch of Rice Crispy Treats in my entire life. I have failed at this task time and again. This time was no exception. I could not get them to shape into a ball and spear for nothing. Eventually I smooshed some into on oval shaped bowl and used wax paper to smoosh into a ball. I then had to let them sit for a few days to get hard. (Never really did that, still fell apart when I would touch them).

My frustration has reached a high point with the house part of the cake.

BAKING THE CAKE
I moved on to baking the cake part. I used a deap 8-1/2 inch pan and made my cake from scratch. As it was baking I had to open the door to check on it and it fell. UGH.....

Now my cake has a huge crevous in the middle of it. OK, this is trial 1 so lets flip it over and decorate it anyway. So I flip it and leave it sit on the counter to cool. At this point the phone is ringing...

One rule in my house, never walk away from food on the counter or it will disappear thanks to my dogs. I walked away.... when I returned the cake was still on the counter but it had a huge bit out of the side. At this point I am so mad that I am just done....

Come back tomorrow for ROUND 2 of my Cake Decorating. Surprisingly I haven't given up, not yet. Oh and I will have pictures tomorrow.