Meh baking day

Ok so when I did my Baking runs in the family post I said "I'm not a self taught baking genius that magically decided to start baking one day". Karma heard that and decided to slap me in the face for saying it.

I had SUCH a BAD baking day the other day. I decided to bake a cake and brownies and do some pretty sugar biscuits for my work collegues to celebrate my birthday and it was a massive flop. Ok maybe not a complete, inedible, massive flop but it was a pretty meh kind of experience.

Firstly - I was making a red velvet cake from the recipe I have for the cupcakes so I had to guess how long it should cook for, which in itself isn't too difficult, but what I didn't realise is that it was my first cake in this new oven and the oven temperature isn't right, so I opened to check the cake and it was very soggy inside and so it flopped...like a meteor impact flop. The middle was only about 2cm high when I took it out :( So I just had to cut it level and then fill the gap with icing (which also for some unknown reason turned out sloppy and weird).

Can you see the mound of sloppy icing stuffed in the middle there?

Then I tried to make some biscuits with pretty royal icing party balloons on - which came out horribly! The problem is that I wanted them to look like this (her biscuits are SOOO beautiful) but it was the first time I've ever worked with royal icing so obviously they aren't magically going to be little edible pieces of art -which is what I was expecting. I can say that I did learn a lot and hopefully next time will be better.

Arggg look at those bumps and weird, not quiet sure what that is, balloon picture

I know now that my royal icing was way too thick. And that I really should find a proper picture to work off next time.

At least the chocolate brownies were a hit, I could probably put the raw batter in a bowl and people would eat it.

Everyone has bad baking days, I was planning to do a post on my beautiful, decorated biscuits and ruffle cake (yes that is what I was planning) but decided I would post this floppy disaster anyway, to make you feel better if you are also having a bad day.

At least everything tasted good and I got pretty flowers from work which made me feel better.