Being asked to bake stuff for the family for Christmas has taught me that I don't really like doing it all that much. I now have even more respect for my mother and how she used to cook all of this stuff every year.
Seems just about everything went wrong that could, and somehow still produce edible food. The highlight of the night was my attempts to remove the cheesecakes from their pans, which I did by
deforming the pans by beating on the bottoms with a
hammer. I ended up damaging a book cover in the process, but about 3 minutes of that removed the cheesecakes in pieces. I squished them together again in the layer cake, so it's only kind of noticeable. That is, after the frosting was put on, which was really white chocolate ganache.
I have learned that I detest making white chocolate ganache. I can never get the consistency right, and I ended up putting something like 2
pounds of white chocolate in less than a pint of heavy cream. Even then it was still a little too thin, so getting it on the cake was a mess. Of course, I know I'm doing it wrong. You're supposed to whip it with a mixer or something, but I didn't, so funny cake ahoy.
Then the cupcakes. Oh, the cupcakes. They look like little green volcanoes with white frosting just kind of tossed on there. I hope they taste good, because with the way they look I'm not convinced I'll be presenting them to the family.
Maybe next year I won't get asked to do this.
And now, to clean up...