Cake Decorating FAIL

My friend Diane posted a recipe on her Facebook page recently for a "firecracker cake." It was a Bundt cake with red, white, and blue icing drizzled on it. It looked beautiful, and was even red, white, and blue on the inside. You can see pictures of what I wanted to do here.

I planned to give the cake away.

My husband accompanied me to the grocery store when I went for ingredients. He complained because I don't make cakes for us. Make cupcakes instead, he suggested, so he could have a couple.

I thought about it. I could make multicolored battered cupcakes, I decided.

Maybe I could figure out how to do something with the icing. I'm a creative person. I could be creative.

I made 12 cupcakes. Unexpectedly, I grew tired, something that happens more frequently than I care to admit when I am trying to do something. It is hard for me to stand up and cook for a long time and I suppose I'd had a busier day than I realized.

At any rate, I didn't want to make any more cupcakes.

I looked at the remaining batter. I dumped it into an 8x8 pan to make a small square cake. I thought, well, I could do a small cake and maybe make a fireworks pattern on it. I could make a gift of the small cake if it looked nice.

The cake parts turned out okay except the blues and reds were not dark enough. They were more like pink and lavender. It takes A LOT of food coloring to make dark red and dark blue.

After the cake and cupcakes cooled, I mixed up the icing. It looked light in color, but I personally don't think food coloring is all that healthy for you and I didn't want to continue adding more.

So I proceeded to try to make a fireworks on the small square cake.

In my opinion, it looked like someone had thrown up Pepto Bismal on a pair of thread-bare blue jeans.

No way was I giving that to anyone.

I ended up icing the cupcakes in white icing, blue icing, and
pink icing.

They looked okay.

There was still a little blue and pink icing left. So I spread it over the square cake to hide the fireworks effort.

That looks even worse, doesn't it?

Of course the square cake wasn't leaving the house. The cupcakes, however, did go to my intended destination, and the recipient was just as happy as if it had been a cake, I think.

I also handed out some of the square cake to a visitor, making sure I cut the part that was mostly pink. So there is not a lot of cake here for us to eat, which is good because we don't need to be eating it, anyway.

But there is a little, and the husband is happy about that. I think I made everybody happy and then some, with one little cake.

It even made me happy because I made others happy, even if I did not make a beautiful cake.

So how about you? What's your most recent recipe fail?