As my husband stated last night, I over committed myself once again...

My office is having a holiday party today and they requested one of my cakes. I've done some pretty fun cakes in the past, so I figured I really needed to wow the crowd this time!...

I waited until last night to buy, cook, and decorate a white chocolate ganache peppermint cake. BIG MISTAKE #1!

Picked up the kids at 4:45... Ran to the grocery store to pick up peppermint extract (since we were out) and some more eggs. Started the cake while the kids and DH ate dinner. I even changed the recipe I normally use for white cake. BIG MISTAKE #2!

While the cakes baked, I got my frosting ready and cleaned up around the house. Everything looked great. After 35 min, at 350 (8" rounds), I stuck the toothpick in.... Completely clean! I pulled the cake out, and *Flump* it caved in!

"That's okay," I thought, as I decided that no one would notice as long as I filled in the hole with BC and crushed peppermint as I originally planned... After all, the other cake came out perfect! After about a full cup of BC in the hole, I plopped the other cake on top and crumb coated as normal. It looked beautiful... And here it is... MISTAKE # 3... Except I could tell that the bottom cake wasn't completely cooking through. I thought, "That's okay, it will look pretty and at least I can have people eat the top half!" Then I started on the ganache...

I've made ganache a bunch of times before with dark chocolate and milk chocolate, never white. I found a recipe which I should have been suspicious about in the first place because it seemed to be an awfully high amount of cream to white chocolate but I used it anyway... It was MISTAKE #4:

1 1/2c. heavy cream
8 oz. white chocolate

It was pretty late at this point, and I will was starting to break down. I figured I had one last shot, so... I heated the cream, poured it over the chocolate and waited for it to thicken up... I poured it over the cake after both had cooled, and threw crushed peppermint on the sides in hopes of covering up anything that hinted to the secret inside. Did I mention I was doing all of this outside to keep everything cold? I ended up with white chocolate flavored cream and peppermint pieces all over my deck... I cleaned that up and threw the whole thing in the fridge overnight with hopes that I would wake up and my cake nightmare will have ended.

Oh, and I even tried to do RI snowflakes... Yeah, those didn't work either...

Well, needless to say, when I opened up the fridge and pulled out my concoction, er creation... I found a very sad looking cake surrounded by a pool of white chocolate flavored cream with glistening peppermint crystals all over it... I guess you really do need more white chocolate than 8 oz., because it never set!

Maybe next time I'll do this in baby steps and start a lot earlier...

I stopped by Price Chopper this morning and bought some scones for the party instead...

so sorry to hear what happen. Next time you will be better prepared at least, we all had something happen one time or another.

Oh no! I think everyone must have experiences like that! Hope today goes better than last night!

Oh Lord, you poor thing!! I'm sorry this happened to you. I have had things like this happen to me because of my bad habit of procrastination. Well, you have inspired me to get my butt off of CC right now and start baking my cakes for a Saturday wedding cake. Again, sorry and thanks!

OH! Poor KarrotKurl!

Always remember in life (not just in cakes): Go with your gut! It was telling you that the layers hadn't baked long enough, and it also told you "too much cream."

It gets better, believe me.

--Knox--

Thanks everyone for your kind words... I really learned some important lessons and hopefully I'll slow it down next time and prepare way in advance...

Thanks again for the support!

Poor sweetie! You just were not meant to bring that cake to them! Maybe if the cake had come out perfect, someone would have decided that the cake made them sick, or someone would have had an allergic reaction to something and blamed you. Or you would have gotten a paid order from someone and in the end they would be the 'demand money back even though there was nothing wrong' type of person.

Think of it as the times when you just can't get out the front door on time, you are running all kinds of late, and then you hit backed up traffic because of an accident, the news on the radio says the time the accident happened. . . and you realize that if you had left on time, there is a good chance you would have been involved in the accident too!

The good news, scones are yummy too!!!!

oh my goodness, you poor thing! I want to cry for you.

Oh my goodness! Im sorry! I just wanted to say though that (and you probably know this by now) but its 1/2 cup whipping cream and 8oz chocolate. Comes out great everytime! you were just a darn 1/2 cup heavy of cream! Uuughh....I hate bad recipes!