Birthday Cake-tastrophe.

    Do you remember this post from a month ago? All about making the perfect dinosaur cake for my little dinosaurs 1st birthday party..... well, it was a great idea in my head. And even a great idea online considering I found it on the Wilton website. I was SO excited about making this birthday cake for my little man that I bought the pan a month before his birthday. My husband warned me and said, "are you going to try that out before his birthday?" and my arrogant self thought "no, it's just a pan... it has instructions.... I've made TONS of cakes!"  Well lets just say if I had tried it out, I would've returned the pan to the store A LOT sooner!
    It all started last night-- typically when I bake a cake I bake the cake the day before to let it cool for a full day before icing. It helps keep less crumbs out of the icing I think. But this time with his party on Thursday, I wanted to bake the cake on Tuesday night and decorate on Wednesday leaving me time to spend with he and Daniel on his birthday and also it left a buffer in case something went wrong, which I am really happy I had. So last night we read all of the instructions to the pan... twice, and we get the cake in the oven. I typically let cakes cool IN the pan for an hour or so before taking it out, but for whatever reason, the instructions say only let it cool 5-10 minutes and then rotate letting steam out of each side because it's 3-D. Took the front side off and the cake crumbled right before my eyes.
.........
I cried!.... No, seriously I cried. I remember Daniel hugging me and me blubbering something about wanting Leeland's birthday to be perfect and not understanding why it didn't work. I followed the instructions!! By this point I was exhausted-- Tuesday's are my long day at work, and I was tired of standing in the kitchen, and I was majorly bummed out, so I went to bed at 9pm last night.

I woke up this morning still frustrated but headed on to work. After work I stopped at the store and got some more butter and more eggs because I was determined to find my error and try again. I got home and got to mixing some more cake batter-- I was going to make this dinosaur! I read the instructions 2 more times and placed everything in the oven again with my fingers crossed. Took it out of the oven, let it cool, went to take one of the sides off and........ it crumbled again!!! At this point I was just plain angry, there were no tears. I chucked the cake in the trash, washed the pan, put it in the box and took it back to the store for a refund. I didn't have my receipt so they could only offer me store credit, but that was fine by me because I really just didn't want to see the pan ever again.... and it was expensive.

With my store credit, I purchased this pan....

It's not 3-D, but it's a dinosaur darn-it! I just baked the 3rd cake in THIS pan, and it came out lovely. I am currently waiting on it to cool so that I can decorate it. Hopefully I won't be up too late tonight so that I can be rested and better enjoy my sweet boy's big day tomorrow!