Failure: A Year in Cakes

My first cake here in Japan - and also my first homemade cake entirely from scratch - was this "spider" I made for a Japanese Halloween party. It doesn't have enough legs, so technically it's a crab, but shit, I ran out of cake and I ran out of space!

It tasted okay, I guess, fairly bland and really dense. I didn't use cake flour and I baked it in my crazy Japanese top-heating-only microwave oven thing. It wasn't what I wanted, but at the last minute I got the idea to whip up some fondue and dipping the bits in chocolate made it okay.

This was a boston cream pie I made for a "congratulations" party after my students took a special English test. I over-did it on the cream decorations because I was late and just kind of started applying it in a rush without any kind of plan. I cheated and used instant pudding for the center and Dove chocolates for garnishes.

The homemade ganache and cream turned out *really* well, but it was a hot day so once I took it out of the fridge it began to sweat like mad. I was so upset! I knew a boston cream pie wasn't a good idea in August, but I wanted to impress my students and I knew the Japanese palette prefers desserts that are less sweet than what I usually make. I took a risk and failed.

These are excellent lessons for me in terms of what happens when I don't give myself enough time or make a plan in advance. I really need to just focus, but it wouldn't hurt to devote more time to studying dessert design and presentation.