The Sugar High Cakery

This is a very whimsical cake. They are typically called Topsy Turvy or Mad Hatter cakes. I quickly learned I had bitten off more than I could chew.

Needless to say my mind was set...I was going to create a Topsy Turvy! The amount have cake it took to make this cake still floors me to this day...and mind you...this was not only my first attempt and a whimsy cake, but my first attempt at ANY tiered cake...period. Ya...looking back this was foolish. 

I started baking the layers a few days in advance and freezing them (mistake #1). Once it came time to assemble the cakes, I took them out of the freezer to defrost. I crowned the layers and noticed that the centers were still cold but not frozen. I decided to go ahead filling, carving, and crumb coating the tiers (mistake #2). I began noticing that the cakes were sweating though the crumb coat...there were beads of condensation. I feared the worst but the cakes dried and everything was fine. I wrapped the bottom tier in plastic and moved it on the turntable to the washer machine (mistake #3). I wake up the next morning to find the bottom tier in the wash sink. "Someone" had moved the cake to add a load of laundry into the washer. The *facepalm* moment comes when that "someone" returned the bottom tier to the washer....the cake survived the wash cycle but I am guessing the spin cycle proved to much!

Well there was not enough time to re-bake the tier. So we moved forward with a 2 tier Topsy Turvy. Everything went off without a hitch after the washer incident. There were a few things I did learn from this cake. Notice how the blue fondant looks cracked? It turns out this is a result from using corn starch as a dusting agent on the counter to roll the fondant. I have since switched to Powdered Sugar and never had this problem again. Also to maintain with "school spirit" I colored the cake of the middle tier (now the bottom) blue. The idea was good in theory; however, it turns out that blue is a very unappetizing color to eat.