The greatest episode that never was or ever will be. This will forever be known as the Lost Episode because we had an epic meltdown at Baking With Chickens HQ.
It all started innocently enough. Mr. Baking With Chickens had the entire kitchen studio set up, camera gear ready to go. I did not have my recipe prepared because I had been working three weeks and weekends straight at my new job and was exhausted by the time we had a free day to shoot an episode. Patience was short my friends. I had envisioned these tiny little monster cakes for YEARS and was so excited to finally make them but I threw a hissy fit. He threw a hissy fit. We both threw hissy fits. He stormed out of the kitchen studio and refused to film the episode.
The Great 2019 M.E.L.T.D.O.W.N.
Baking is cathartic for me. It's a fun activity to destress and be completely creative. However, when you take something that was a hobby and turn it into a side hustle it suddenly can become not as fun anymore. Creating this blog and the content to go with it along with a full time job is not easy. Working with your partner to try and create something from scratch is not easy.
We've decided early in this process that making Baking With Chickens should be fun. And the minute it becomes not fun, we should stop and cool it instead of forcing ourselves. So that's what happened. It stopped being fun in that moment and we realized that the episode, even if we pressed on to made it, would never be as good as it could be because we would bring our sour energy into it and onto the screen to produce a shitty episode.
I made the cakes anyway because I wanted to and had all the ingredients set up. It was actually nice to bake something without the pressure and stress of filming an episode in that moment.
Get the Recipe?
Yadda yadda, that's great, shut up and tell me how to make the cake goddamit.
There's not very much to these cakes. I also didn't take any photos during the process so I can't show you. You'll just have to use your imagination and creativity.
I baked a sheet cake of vanilla funfetti cake (any cake will do).
Sliced approximately 6-inch round layers from the sheet cake.
Stacked three layers per monster and frosted with Swiss Buttercream Frosting between the layers and gave it a crumb coat
Made a lot of Swiss Buttercream Frosting, split it into five bowls (white, black - very small amount, blue, pink, purple).
Added gel food coloring to each bowl, leaving one plain white. You only need a small amount of black frosting for the eyes, mouth and other accents.
Used different piping tips, filled piping bags and started frosting the little monsters all around.
Chill the cakes in the fridge to stiffen up before transporting.
Lessons Learned
Tiny little monsters lurk inside all of us. It's okay to let them out once in a while because they represent the truth of what you need in that moment. In that moment I needed a weekend off to chill out and reset.
I wish I had taken a photo of the cake guts to show you how pretty the insides looked. But I was tired so you get no photos. Bake your own tiny monster cake!
Did you make this?? Tag @bakingwithchickens and hashtag #bakingwithchickens#bakingwithchickens on Instagram.
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