Pool Day fun

This post is over a month coming - but I promised to post pictures of the (mis)adventure, and I'm not one to disappoint. Back in June I threw a pool party here for my friends, and a conversation with Mel prompted me to want to make this masterpiece! I had a few days to prepare and accumulate the candy needed for the project, and a hunt for chicklets successfully ended when Mel found this great candy store in Austin for me (complete with Willy Wonka character 8-foot-tall salesman). My initial plan was to make this as a checkerboard cake, which is a three layer cake. My first attempt with this was riddled with mistakes. First, I did not cook them quite long enough, the chocolate cake was not fully cooked, but the white cake was and I didn't want to over do it. When I pulled them out one of the layers collapsed a LOT in the middle. I freaked out initially, but realized I could use this as the top layer of the pool cake, which would need the center cut out anyway. When I had this revelation I rushed to fix the cake, and cut out the center of it. While it was still in the pan. And not cooled. (anyone spot my mistakes here?) Now imagine trying to get the outer ring of the cake out of the pan in one piece. IMPOSSIBLE. I was struck with the brilliant idea of "pasting" it all together with frosting. Let's just say, this cake quickly landed in the trash and I began again, more slowly, attempting a two layer solid chocolate cake.

I made the two layers, cooled them, removed them from the pans and put them in the fridge for a few hours. Then I attempted to cut the hole in the center of one layer. I filled and stacked them, got on a thin crumb coat layer of frosting, and then I let it stand in the fridge overnight. This was probably my best decision, the fridge overnight allowed it to all firm up and gave it some support. Things looked MUCH better in the morning when I pulled it out to start again.See, that looks solid and sturdy - and pretty straight if I don't say so myself. Now I mixed up some very white frosting, and put on the final coat, and laid the tile (chicklet) border. I also poured the blue colored hard candy circle that would become the pool water. The original recipe called for Jell-O, but I didn't think the Jell-O could withstand the Texas heat, so I opted for some hard candy instead. When the pool water candy had sufficiently hardened I attempted to put it inside the pool - but I had made one more misstep. I hadn't made the circle of pool water precisely the same size as I had made the hole in the cake. In retrospect I wish I had made the pool water BEFORE layering the cakes, and just made it larger than the pool hole, and placed it under the top layer. So, I resorted to breaking the pieces and forcing them in a somewhat mosaic pattern. I was unhappy with this oversight, and it nearly ruined the whole cake for me.But, I kept on. Now for all the decorative touches. I used teddy grahams and colored twizzlers and gummy life savers and fruit stripe gum and starbursts and peach rings. I mixed a small amount of frosting with various colors and used a tooth pick for the bathing suits - those were the hardest, but I couldn't let these guys go naked, now could I?Now it was just the simple task of setting these guys all around the cake - a little bit of frosting to "glue" them down - and then quickly get the cake back in the fridge so it wouldn't melt away! In general, I am happy with the way it came out, my friends seemed to like it (and more than one person appreciated my attention to multi-cultural detail), but with all the mistakes I made along the way I was a little less than impressed. The next one will be better!!