My own Cake Wreck story

Over at Cake Wrecks the other day, Jen showcased some Barbie cake wrecks. Immediately, my mind jumped to my own wreckish incident with a Barbie cake.

When Annie turned 4 years old, she wanted a Barbie Cinderella cake. For Annie's first three birthdays, my mom came over to help me make the cake. But I was feeling pretty confident and decided I could handle this one on my own.

The plan was to make a castle cake and a Barbie cake with the dress decorated like Cinderella's ball gown. I went to the cake store to buy the castle pan and a cake doll. But the store didn't have any cake dolls in stock. So I decided I would just use one of Annie's Barbie dolls to make the Cinderella cake.

I went home, baked the cake in my large Pampered Chef batter bowl, washed the Barbie and wrapped her legs in Saran wrap.

When the cake was finished and cooled, I turned it out on a cookie sheet and cut a large hole down the center for the Barbie to stand in.

She was too tall! The tops of her legs stuck out of the top of the cake. No problem, I thought. I'll just bake a round cake to stand the skirt on, giving Barbie another inch or so to sink into. Because the cake mix made two rounds and I only needed one, I decided to bake one round and a dozen cupcakes so the kids could have a little treat.

Once that baking was done, I put the skirt cake on the round cake, extended the hole into the round cake and slipped Barbie back in the hole.

For crying out loud, that Barbie has legs that just don't quit -- she was still too tall! If I only I had made two round cakes. But I didn't.

"Think Amy..." I told myself. "A ha!" In a flash of creativity, I decided to give the skirt a ruffle on the top by putting a cupcake on top of the skirt, cutting a hole in it and sliding Barbie through all three cakes -- the cupcake, the skirt cake and the round cake.

That's when I discovered Barbie's physical flaw -- her hips were too wide and cracked open the cupcake. Now what to do? About that time, my sister Angie stopped by. Her idea was to cut off Barbie's legs.

Annie overheard the suggestion and was mortified. "No!," she screamed. "You can't cut off Barbie's legs!"

Hmmm....but maybe I could just temporarily pop them off for the purposes of finishing the cake and then put them back on after the party? So I sent Annie to the basement to play and tried to pry Barbie's legs from her hips.

SNAP! SNAP!

Barbie's legs were not meant to come off and trying to get them to do so snapped the hip sockets.

At this point, there was really only one thing to do. So laughing, I called my mom and left her a very short message:

"Three words: Double Amputee Barbie!"

Looking on the bright side, I figured at least Barbie's height was no longer a problem. I removed the cracked cupcake from the skirt and gently place Barbie into the hole in the skirt cake. Well, Barbie certainly wasn't too tall -- she was too short and fell all the way through to the bottom of the stacked cakes.

Shoot! Now what? Not about to let a still perky though legless doll and some homemade dessert defeat me, I thought for minute. Genius!

Remember those cupcakes? Yep -- I shoved them into the cakes to plug up the long tube I'd hollowed out for Barbie to fit in, leaving just enough room for a half Barbie to fit. Finally, the cake was ready to frost to look like Cinderella.

Just as I was finishing, Annie came upstairs and said "Mommy, that is the most beautiful Cinderella cake I have ever seen!" I was beaming.

She went on..."Tomorrow, I'll have to give Julie (the Barbie's name) a bath because her legs will be all sticky!"

"Oh, they might not be as sticky as you think," I said knowingly.

The next day, I had to confess that in the pursuit of the perfect cake, I had broken Julie's legs. Annie was traumatized. Even a drama queen back then, she threw her arm across her eyes and sobbed.

"Can I see her?," she asked?

So I pulled the half-doll out of sink and handed to her.

"No!" She wailed with such anguish that I immediately promised to take her to Target and buy her a replacement.

In the checkout lane at Target, the cashier remarked how nice it was that I was buying Annie a new Barbie, to which Annie replied,

"Well, she had to because she broke off my Barbie's legs!"

As the cashier looked at me like I was the most evil mother on earth, I wished there was a giant cake with a hole in the middle that I could crawl into.