If you need to be thanked in the acknowledgments for Emerald Blaze, please email me. I’ve got the Chinese and Hong Kong readers, the Italian reader, the legal reader, and I can’t remember who I am missing.
If you beta read this book, please email me, because I can’t be trusted. We are trying to finish the copy edit, get the web designer all the stuff, answer some professional questions, all at the same time, and I don’t know which way is up.
Yesterday, I made my husband a chocolate cake. I can do many things. Decorating cakes is not one of them. My cakes taste good. They do not look good. This particular cake took 4 hours. It has three layers of chocolate cake, strawberry filling, and Swiss meringue chocolate buttercream. It looks like so. It barely fit under the cake hood and needed dowels for structural integrity, just in case.
Yeah. So I presented this cake to my husband. Later on I see him returning from the kitchen with a little bowl of cake and ice cream.
Me: Decided to try the cake?
He: Not exactly. There was some cake pieces on the side, so I took that.
Me: …
He: Why let it go to waste?
He found the bits I cut off the cake to level it and ate that instead. O_o
He did have some this morning and profanity was used in describing the deliciousness of the cake, so I consider this to be a home run. š
Got to go. Email me.
aww always nice hear little stuff like this!!!!!
Oh, I don’t care that the cake doesn’t look professional. It looks soooooo damn good an my diabetic self would have put myself into a sugar coma because I have no self control with sweets.
I find that you can have a perfect looking cake or a perfect tasting cake, but never both. I will always go for taste!
The cake look great! Lots of frosting is always a good thing. š
Iād rather have a cake that tastes amazing and looks a little ārusticā than one that looks amazing and tastes āmehā. The true magic of the professional cake maker is a cake that looks amazing and tastes better. But some of us have other work to do….
Rustic! I am so stealing that!
Ha! I always remember one of the ācelebrityā Great British Bake-Offs, where Mary Berry described a disastrous cake decoration as ārather informalā ????????
You are such a delight! I really enjoy the reality, humor and creativeness .Thank you!
This looks delicious! I am jealous
Looks yummy and sounds scrumptious to me. I tried writing Happy Birthday In icing once and it looked like a 5 yr old did it. In fact a 5 yr old probably could have done better. Obviously Gordon knows never to let good chocolate cake go to waste! All hail chocolate ???? ????????
Go Gordon! A former coworker did a lot of wedding cakes as a hobby. She would bring in the “scraps” to work and they vanaished in a heartbeat. We considered it our emvironmental duty to keep them out of landfill š
I don’t see any issues with it. The important thing is that it tastes good! And I will say that it looks delicious. I wish you could transport a piece to me (she says as she looks for a sugar free treat that tastes good)
Love the cake! Like with all important things in life, what it looks like is not what matters (most) š
Ha ha!
Gordon for the win!
My husband would do the same thing. So cute.
Must…have…cake. ????
I think it looks fabulous!!
Homemade cake is the best!!
(Reminds me of the cake I always asked for on my birthday when I was a kid – chocolate cake with peppermint frosting. The frosting had to be made in a double boiler on the stove, and you had to beat it with a hand-held electric beater for seven minutes. Only a mom would love a kid that much!!)
My cakes either taste good and look average or look great and taste average. Apart from my annual family Christmas cakes (which I loathe), that take ages even aside from the months of fruit soaking, the decorating goes across three days minimum, I don’t even like them but which everyone insists I make every year. And occasionally I make flapjacks, they look burnt, they smell burnt, but suddenly they taste like magic drugs you have to eat all in one go and then feel sick from. But that was my big failure and you can’t buy light brown sugar anywhere in London at the moment so I won’t be able to try that again anyway.
If you can get molasses and caster sugar, you can make brown sugar of the shade of you preference.
Looking at it made me a little hungry and wanting to order some sweet bakery at 2am in the morning????
I feel your pain on cake decorating, I even have all the tips and everything but it never turns out the way I imagine it in my head not even close!!
Glad Gordon loved it though that always warms your heart when they really like something you have made for them!
Here is a picture of one of our kittens hopefully she will make you smile!
Looks like it tastes yummy – that’s what counts.
My cakes look awful but taste good. I guess I prefer that to looks good to tastes awful. Worst part is the clean up.
I stick to 13 x 9 pans and sometimes I don’t use frosting. i’m better with cookies. and I have a killer pudding/brownie/cool whip bowl thing and a two ton (two tone, but it’s very rich) dessert thing that I get raves about, but will only make if lots of people are around to eat it because it’s very rich and not healthy for you.
The cake look so good! If you have any other cake or ice cream pics or the same cake but in cross section (if there is anything left) it would be much appreciated! I love cake š
I once was tasked with producing a cake for a friendās birthday camping/rock climbing trip. Half of the cake disintegrated when I started trying to frost it. I stuck it all back together with frosting and drew stick-figure rock climbers on the resulting embankment. Bam. Themed cake. Anybody who comments on how ugly it is, doesnāt need sugar today.
Also your cake looks delicious! The frosting looks all fluffy and whipped.
I love you guys so much. Your blog always makes me smile and laugh out loud. Thank you!????
I think that cake looks delicious and that’s all that matters. I never mastered decorating either. Watched plenty of videos, but they don’t seem to stick.
As my grandmother used to say, it all looks the same in the end.
Good tasting cake will always win over good-looking cake!! From another person whoās cakes taste better than they will ever look.
It looks so yummy!!
How can we beta read? Iām dying to read Emerald Blaze
Are you kidding? That cake look AMAZING!!
Haha looks lovely
I even made choc chip muffins today. Hubby and son loved them.
????
The cake looks delicious!
You need to watch a baking show on Netflix called Nailed It if you think your cake looks bad. Really tasty is best.
The cut off bits are the best bits.
From age 3 I’ve helped my grandma bake her cakes (the best chocolate cake ever made) and she always makes at least 2 layers.
So there’s two cut off bits. They get homemade strawberry jam and her chocolate icing on them and we ate them as snacks while we did the clean up.
It’s the thing I miss most since being diagnosed with Coeliac. I still help her bake but it’s just not the same.
Regardless, that looks delicious! Would you mind sharing the recipe?
My hubby also likes to eat the trimmings before the actual cake š Your cake looks very yummy. You can stabilize the filling by adding some gelatin to it.
OMG, that cake looks sooo good!
Congrats on making an amazing cake!
Your cake looks delicious! You can tell it tastes great from the picture. My daughter ate her cake scraps recently for her 7th birthday cake and called them ‘cake peels’, so henceforth, they’re always cake peels to me.
Happy baking is tasty baking.
That cake looks AMAZING!! And everyone knows the most important part of a cake is that it tastes good. XD
this is so cute! Important to make time for stuff like this:)
I looked at that photo and all I thought was “I need a piece of that cake”. Looks amazing. I love fluffy glossy icing. I am now inspired to once again try to replicate the chocolate cake with fluffy white icing that I found in a little bakery in Pt Townsend, WA about 18 years ago.
Cake scraps are the best! They’re the bonus for the baker & family. We love to scrape the fudgy bits of cake from the parchment liners. Absolute heaven! No cake should go to waste.
The test is in the taste! Personally, I think it even looks yummy & decadent. Glad it inspired profanity!
Itās not bad, itās cute and sounds amazing! I act like the strawberry boner I mean accent in the center. My husband says some of my ugliest concoctions are the most delicious! Iāve made some beautiful food that tastes like garbage so I take imperfect looking food any day!
Geez that was supposed to say ACTUALLY like
::laughter:: ????
I have the same issues and now so does my 13 yr old. Her plan is to sign up for Nailed it on Netflix and win because he cakes, pastries and cookies taste amazing but she cant decorate to save her life ????????. I think its a sound plan and will encourage it if they ever do a nailed it kids.
Funnily enough hubby can barely boil water but he can decorate like a pro. So the kids bday cakes look and taste great with us as a team.
You are not alone in the frosting skills department. Behold, my attempt at blackberry gin cupcakes! Delicious… and awful looking.
And you bake too? You are f###ing awesome!!!!!
It will always look worse in your stomach! But so delicious going down.
So third job retraining after another business shut down was Culinary School. Graduated certified chef but wanted to work the line but sexism pushed me to garde manger basically the cold side and bakery. Signature cake was complex one blk and white called tuxedo cake. 3 layers blk wht special frosting. Then all three layer German chocolate cakes lemon meringue pies all from scratch dozen at a time. What finally pushed me into job retraining number FOUR was making whisky bread pudding croissant base with golden raisins and whisky caramel sauce. For 1500. Really truly thought I was going to die right there in bake shop, this pro chef opinion on your cake. Magnificent. Made with live is THE BEST.
That would be LOVE stupid auto correct
I visit the website http://www.cakewrecks.com when I am feeling down. I also bake good cakes from scratch but frosting them; not so good. When only a bit of icing is scraped into the compost it is a win regardless of what the cake looked like. I still keep trying and my family appreciates it so that is what counts.
He wanted to enjoy your creation as a whole, while still eating. . I guess he figured out how to have his cake and eat it too!!! Hee Hee
That buttercream looks delicious!!
A beautiful cake, no scraps and a happy husband, what’s not to like. Good for you both.
Now I want cake.
There is nothing wrong with that cake. Well, to be completely sure, you’d have to send me two big pieces to taste. š Happy Birthday, Gordon. If it isn’t your birthday, just move it to fit in with the cake. No need to stand on ceremony or keep birthdays to just one day.
Good looking cakes may get you more ālikesā, but delicious cakes will win you hearts.
Living in the US, the hardest thing to balance is the amount of sugar that goes into a cake. To my Asian taste buds, less sugar is almost always a win, but to my rest of the world friends, more sugar is usually the safer option. So whenever I bake I always have to consider my options.
Here are two examples, Strawberry Mousse Cake, lighter, less sweet, Asian favorite. And Death by Chocolate cake, for the rest of the folks.
We lived in Japan for 9 yrs. My kids tasted buds adjusted to less sugar and we always bought from the fresh bakeries in the neighborhood. When they got home to the US it took them a while to adjust, but I still hear complaints about American cakes being too sweet.
Iām a professional baker and you did great!!! Swiss Meringue Buttercream is high level baking!!! I WISH I HAD A PIECE!!!
Helenās eyes lit up. āWhat kind of cake?ā
“The delicious kind.”
Yaaasss!! Deep dish cheers!.,
Oh… that is a Good one!
YASSSSSSSSSS!!!!
+1… with a little drooling because I want a piece of that delicious cake!
That cake sounded delicious. Want to share the recipe?????????. But yes y’all deserve the little treats in life. I know y’all work so hard and long to bring us joy in your writings. I await eagerly and cheers to y’all.
Great looking Cake. And it’s Chocolate & Strawberry Cake. How can that EVER be bad. My mouth is watering just lookimg at it. Well done.
At some point can we have the recipe?
The only thing that would be better would be chocolate and raspberry;) My mom used to make me a particular kind of cake for my birthday when I was a kid, it was chocolate layered with pastel tinted whipped cream-YUM!
I have exactly the same issue with my cakes, and please can we have the recipe?
Ha ha ha, Ilona Andrews. Loved your post. My co workers were and friends as well as family are of the opinion that it may look like manure but tastes fantastic. Gold star for Gordon. In my house what falls to the side or the floor is manna from Heaven. Other houses have a 3 second rule but not in my house.
So be happy. Every human has a talent and I prefer to cook well not picture perfect which can be really gross sometimes.
My cousin makes ākitty litterā for the annual family reunion and every year there is a fight over the last spoonful. No kitty litter is not given name but itās what cousinās brother said first time she brought it. It has chocolate and whipped cream etc in it. Very decadent and rich. But looks like cat litter. So laugh and enjoy.
Yummmm. After seeing the cake and reading about its wonderful layers I had to get chocolate ASAP! So I had to hunt up some, the cupboards are almost bare but I found some brownies in the freezer from long ago. A quick thaw in the microwave and the craving was conquered. So thankful I donāt have a scale to weigh myself during this stay at home period of time. ????
My husband is a cake NUT! When I make one, I take the extra I cut off to level it and place it in a zip bag…He calls this my “Decoy Cake” , that keeps him from diving into the actual item before it’s time.
You can cut off the top to level it?
Huh. Who knew? Smart. š
Here I was, artfully arranging icing on top … lots of icing …
Yes, we do “decoy cake” too: usually, it’s the burnt or misshapen edges.
Its chocolate, who cares how it looks. Its made from scratch, another bonus, cut yourself some slack you are way ahead of the game. I have not baked anything that requires I have to cream butter and sugar in years. Cakes and cookies baked from the box for me, it tastes the same every time but it does lack the decadent flavor that made from scratch baked goods have.
You are amazing. I baked cupcakes last night. Didn’t get to put any frosting on them. Not that I like that much frosting anyway, but it was my son’s birthday. They were gone along with the pizza I bought for the party. Kids disappeared as well. Feeling deflated, I cooked myself a steak and that was all folks. LOL
IT looks divine. Glad Gordon enjoyed it, lol…. I love all your food posts!!
I made a cake this week. My usual icing is too runny so I put in in the frig. Still tastes great. My secret is Mexican vanilla.
I canāt count how many times Iāve taken a bite of a beautiful cake that looks gorgeous and costs $$$ and been disappointed. Taste wins for me every time!
+1!!!!!!
What she said! Sound like itād make your eyes roll back in your head. Forget purty.
Eu ia escrever em inglĆŖs mas fiquei com medo de soar irĆ“nico ou errado. (IncrĆvel como eu consigo ler as coisas mas morro pra escrever).
O bolo parece delicioso. Me deu vontade de ir no mercado e comprar uma fatia mas, no momento, Ć© melhor ficar em casa, infelizmente.
Chocolate cake is not my go to, but that sounds delicious! Now I wish I had a slice
It looks soooo tasty! Now I am craving chocolate-cake ????āāļø! Bad! Bad! Bad! I already gained 2kg because of corona-stay-at-home-selfmade-cookies! Its going to rain for the next days! Desaster in my figure-future! Enjoy your cake! Recipe pretty please?!?
Greets from switzerland!
Inga
Canāt bake. First time I baked I decided to cut the amount of sugar , it seemed too much. They looked ok, but were tasteless.
Plus I have very old oven, so either the cookies burn or are runny.
I can make Irish soda bread in a toaster oven.
So I think you are a baking genius.
It looks scrumptious.
I envy anyone who can create such wonderful desserts.
Canāt knit, canāt bake, but i can cook, love making soup . And I am an expert at reading. And shopping for anything ????. I can find a bargain or the hidden gem fast. Plus pets love me at first sight. Dogs who bark at everyone, come over to me and wag their tail.
And I always remember the pets name, maybe not the owner but the pet. Weird memory for almost anything . I hear it , see it or read it and it sticks in my head.
Thank you for sharing all your culinary skills.
It looks delicious and now I’m craving some cake.
I might try baking some tomorrow š
Taste is wwaaaaaayy more important than looks! And it looks tasty!! Personally I think super fancy cakes are over rated š now I wanna go make chocolate cake…mmmm
With tons of respect and care, may I please say – you’re too hard on yourself, Ilona. That cake is gorgeous. Homemade cakes aren’t supposed to look like professionally made ones – that’s like calling an apple ugly because it doesn’t look like a banana. Cake decorators typically use royal icing on the outside because buttercream isn’t stiff enough. But buttercream tastes better – any chance you could share your recipe? It looks silky, fluffy and scrumptious!
Personally, I think it looks fabulous! You took the time to make it, and if it tastes good, that’s all that matters. ANd I’m sure Gordon loves it! Home run!! Go you!
That cake looks wonderful!
Now I’m hungry.
No cake at home, but there are mango mochi in the freezer. NOT the same, alas.
Be well.
If one of MY cakes looked that good, I’d be proud. And yes, I agree – “rustic” is definitely an enviable decor skill. Your cake is beautiful, the frosting looks to die for. Feel free to post a short video of Gordon cutting into the cake so that we can see the inside. He can even swear when he takes a bite….
I enjoy you guys so much. From cake carnage to your hubby being awesome and threatening to put his foot down because heās worried about you. You guys are amazing and I see your personalities in your characters more and more with these posts. Thanks for the laughs and all yāall do. Your books, especially the KD series always cheer me up and bring me a sense of comfort during stressful times.
Thank you so much for the giggle over the cake. Last week I would have paid quite a bit for that cake. It was my youngest child’s birthday and I didn’t have the ingredients or the pans to make her cake. Her birthday is very close to my dad’s, so my mom always made the cake and we celebrated them both at the same time. I live in the Detroit tri-county area, so there is no seeing any family any time soon, and you never know what food you will find at the store. Today they had toilet paper, but no meat to speak of. No flour either.
The cake looks yummy, can’t go wrong with chocolate and strawberries š
I have the same problem, they taste good but look horrible. It’s especially embarrassing if the cake’s supposed to be sold at some village fair.
A conversation with one of the old village ladies (whose cake ofc looked gorgeous…) cheered me back up then, it went something like this:
Me: This cake looks ridiculously ugly!
Old lady: Did you put anything bad into it?
M: of course not!
OL: then it can’t taste bad. If you only put in good ingredients, it has to be tasty.
Sounds better in German dialect, but this amounts to a rough translation š
Enjoy the cake!
Would love that cake recipe myself lol
Eh Iāve never even tried icing a cake with homemade frosting. Iām impressed. And as my mother used to say, āIt all looks the same once it gets in your stomach.ā Iām with Gordon, though- I wouldnāt of those cake bits go to waste either!
Cheers and thanks for sharing!
I was watching Chef’s Table on Netflix and they had the Chef from Milk Bar in New York I can’t remember her name. She does not frost the sides of the cake as she thinks people should be able to see the inside after all the work you do. It’s more important to her that it tastes good and you see the work you put on the inside than a perfectly frosted cake. I thought it was a great way to look at things.
Christina Tosi. That is worth watching just to make one feel happy. She has an indomitable spirit and kinda defines “impish”. She has stuff like crack pie and cereal milk desserts. I thought of her immediately when frosting came up. Was in NYC just before all the shutdowns started and went into one the Milkbars. OMG.
I am now dying to go down to NYC and to milk bar
So many “professionally decorated” cakes taste like absolute crap because they use frosting (or worse, fondant) designed to hold a shape and/or look pretty instead of a frosting chosen for taste. It’s like flawless, tasteless grocery store tomatoes versus a slightly blotchy heirloom tomato from a local farmer – one taste is all it takes to know the pitted, lumpy heirloom is WHERE IT’S AT. I see a cake like yours, with delightfully gloopy droopy bits, and my brain instantly assumes it tastes AMAZING.
Is there a recipe you can share for this delectable confection or can you point us to the book(s) or blog(s) where we might find it?!
Iām right there with you. I can bake and make it taste good, but my decor skills just arenāt there. My hats off to anyone who possesses both skills. I do still think it looks pretty good and itās making me want cake. ????
Hey, at least you were able to find flour to bake with! Win/win!The fact that it’s delicious entirely negates how it looks. No one cares when the plate’s empty what it looked like!
Yesterday was my husbandās birthday and cheesecake is the only kind of cake he likes. So, for the first time ever, I made a cheesecake from scratch in a springform pan. Despite the fact the I double wrapped the pan in heavy duty aluminum foil with no seams, a little bit of water still leaked into my crust. He scraped off just the outside section of the crust and said that the rest was amazing so Iām taking it!! Generally Iām a really good cook but not much of a baker because I hate having to measure everything but Iāve been baking a lot since weāve been under quarantine and Iām finding that since I have the time, I really enjoy it even though it often looks a little sketchy ????
If you have an instant pot, you should try cooking the āthis old galā cheesecake. Best basic cheesecake I have ever made or tasted. Also, because it is done in a small space, the cake is small – which is great if you are cooking for 2 or 3…
https://thisoldgal.com/pressure-cooker-new-york-cheesecake/
I think it looks great !! and delicious !! and time consuming to make!! …………………………………………… Wish I had some !!!
Thanks for sharing !!
Mmmm, looks good. Now I want to bake. I am not a cake person but I am tempted to make one. Maybe cookies
You can bake a cake for my family. We would eat your messy cut off pieces AND the decorated cake in one swoop!! It looks amazing.
It looks (and sounds) yummy! Gordon sounds like my dad haha
My family loves German Chocolate Cake, the reason is for the icing made from scratch which is technically a filling. If you eat coconut butter-pecan frosting from a can you are doing it wrong. I decided once when I was in a baking mood that not only would I make the icing from scratch, I’d do the cake as well. So I decided to experiment with my mother’s work (who will eat ANYTHING) before my family. First go, total success. Then I got cocky. I was making the second cake for my family and for some reason decided I remembered the oven temp didn’t double check. So I’m watching this cake bake EXTREMELY fast and oh dear lord I had the oven set 100 too high (big whoops). Yeah, that was bad, turned it down and the inside of the cake was fine, the outside not so much. I cut off the burned parts and my aunt (the one who ABSOLUTELY LOVES this cake) said don’t throw it away. I ended up having a bowl of ‘burnt ends’ that I dumped the extra icing on (I don’t believe in using part of a can of condensed milk so I over make the batch every time). My aunt and cousin were literally fighting over that bowl ignoring the ‘real’ cake. Honestly in my family the cake is just a vessel for distribution of the icing anyway.
You had me at chocolate and strawberries ????????
Not just Swiss meringue buttercream, but chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream! I’m a fair home baker, but Swiss buttercream eludes me. Utterly. That cake made me drool. forget worrying about how a cake looks. I’ve been served ‘way too many lovely cardboard cakes. Go for the gusto, and you nailed it. I want some. Now. I’ll have to settle for layers of coffee and vanilla ice cream layered with orange ice and drizzled with fudge sauce. All homemade. Gotta go with what I got. Nope. Still want some of that cake.
99% of the really pretty insanely expensive wedding I have tried tasted about like what you’d expect the box it came in to taste like. YOUR cake looks like it tastes great.
In one of my culinary academy classes we were shown a book cook cover for a wedding cake cook. The cake was several layers and had a lean comparable to the Tower of Pisa. The white frosting looked nasty and appeared to have been applied with a small trowel. Your cake puts that other cake to shame. No lie. The other cake was gracing the cover of a Martha Stewart book. The chef wanted us to know how NOT to do it.
If you wish to practice, mix cheapo margarine and sugar into a “buttercream” and practice with that. Use can reuse it quite a few times. Don’t, of course, use for eating, just for practicing technique.
So, your frosting has feathers. Play to your strengths, Play with those feathers, make them all go in one direction around the cake, or that sore of thing. And if you really want a more “pro” look, get a frosting turntable. Put on the cake, and frost and then turn while holding spatula. Learned that in basic pastry. And it makes a huge difference.
I’ll be waiting for a piece of that very tempting looking cake in the mail.
Pretty is in the eye of the beholder and never lasts – when you cut, grab and eat, it stops looking pretty.
Tasting good lasts. And taste memory can take us everywhere.
So good for you for Taste Memory and don’t beat yourself up too much for Pretty.
(At least that’s how I deal with it, being a Bad Baker since I don’t even wait for the baking but attack at the dough stage. Sigh)
I’m sorry but I have to side with your husband on the leftover pieces, leave nothing to waste and you will be well rewarded. As to the cake itself it looks way better than what I could do. You are too much of a self critic if you think this is not one of your skills. And if it tastes even a little bit as good as your writing talents then it is probably a masterpiece.
Yummy! I love a little bit of cake with my frosting…lol. The cake looks like love to me and thatās the most important thing of all.
Hilarious… And your cake looks way better than any of mine!
(Also, I got so giddy just reading about the people you need to thank because it made it seem as if the release date was closer than ever- I can’t wait!)
I just want to dig my fingers into the floopy frosting in the side . . .
Hey, Iāve seen, and done, a hell of a lot worse than that. Doing buttercream with a ziplock bag is a talent on its own – last time I tried that, I may have said bad words. Many, many bad words. Itās also important to remember that if a thing is made of delicious, it really doesnāt matter what it looks like. Nothing invalidates delicious. Especially profanity level delicious. God, I really want chocolate cake now. lol
It looks fine! Google image search ”baking fails”, if you really want to see things that probably tasted good but looked different than expected!
https://www.google.com/search?q=baking+fails&sxsrf=ALeKk0046TpicjKakZ8iMUfjuwXYLMY0CA:1588195440637&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj3vMqIyY7pAhU-hHIEHVgDDW8Q_AUoAXoECA8QAw&biw=1093&bih=500
I just picked up one of your books not too long ago and found myself consuming it at warp speed. I have now devoured everything I could get my grubby little fingers on that was created by Ilona Andrews. *Burp* I am pleasantly satiated at the moment and have you both to thank for it.
Meandered onto your blog and I have to say I so appreciate your posts. Thanks for keeping it real and thanks for throwing out those little crumbs (aka: snacks) that you guys have been working on.
Ilona- Swiss meringue buttercream is my favorite. Not very easy to work with, but slap that stuff on a cake and you will make just about any mouth happy. I had to laugh at Gordon eating the shavings first. My husband calls them “cake rinds”. Your confectionary creation is lovely. I’d eat a piece for sure. At least your dowels did their job, unlike the time I had an incident with dowels(or a lack thereof), the trunk of a car, and an explosion of cake innards…
Hey that cake don’t look bad to me. More important than how it looks is always how does it taste because I have seen some beautiful looking cakes that you couldn’t pay me to eat cause they tasted so nasty. Love that even amongst the crazy business that is your lives as some of the most wonderful authors I have had the joy to read you still find a way to let us into the simple ordinary everyday of your lives and make us feel as if we are a part of it.
I can’t decorate either. That looks tasty, which is all I really care about. I’m kinda like Gordon in that I would probably have nibbled cake first. Your combination sounds inspired.