What I did wrong

 So many things went wrong with this cake that I wasn't going to blog about it, but we should learn from our mistakes, right? The night of the Super Bowl this monstrosity happened. Let's dive in.

I promised Sheletha a turtle cake for her birthday. I was feeling lazy, so I bought a box of cake mix and a jar of caramel topping. I should have also bought a can of frosting, because I was too lazy to make buttercream to go on the cake before the fondant. Somehow I thought it would be a good idea to pour caramel on the cake instead. Fun fact: all that exposed cake you see in the picture? Yeah, the fondant didn't stick to that. All that oozing caramel running down the sides? Kept on oozing under the fondant.

Turtle cake = chocolate cake + nuts + caramel

 I wanted to take this nail polish tutorial to make a nebula design and try to recreate it on cake. I thought hey, I'll get some black fondant and do some sponge painting with frosting and it will look awesome!

Just think about how much food coloring is in that. All the food coloring, that's how much. 

 Needless to say, it did not look awesome. First, I was using makeup sponges which were much too small for my task. I should have gotten regular cleaning sponges, or even better, natural sponges. They would have given me a much better "paint" distribution instead of just smudges all over. Second, the brushes I got in my student kits...well, they suck. I need something with a finer tip and less crappy bristles to be able to paint a star that actually has points.  About the only thing that looked good was the pearl dust glitter.

That's totally what outer space looks like. Totally.

Not being one to waste food, I brought the cake to work anyway. Ugly cake still tastes good, right? That is, until your cake carrier pops open and the cake falls in the snow. -_-