The cake that almost wasn't

This one will NOT be posted on my Tiers of Joy blog, but it was too funny to not post here. I have taken August off from cakes, with the intention of painting and decorating Sawyer's new "big-girl" room as well as a whole schload of other house projects and a few vacations. But our friends Natalie & Sid needed a quick little 2nd birthday cake for their adorable little Heather, so I decided to let one little tiny cake slide into August. The cake we decided to do was one that came out of a cookbook I have, the one that I stole my favorite buttercream recipe from, but they have two buttercream recipes; the good one and then one that I've never tried. But it did say that If you want to tint it with bright, true colors, then you should use the one with part shortening (yuk) instead of all butter, so I thought, heck, whatever, I'll try the colorful one. BAD IDEA!!! As I was putting the finishing touches on the decorating, I noticed that things were starting to go schlump a bit, so I kept putting it back into the fridge for a while in between working on it. However, on the drive there, with my car's delightful air conditioner cranked all the way to like 60 degrees, it just kept schlumping more and more until it ended up like this.It was a complete joke. I couldn't believe someone who actually has a fantastic cookbook, would include this recipe. Craziness. Needless to say I just went to Smith's & bought a crappy grocery store cake because the party was supposedly in a hour. Got to the house & no one is home. Called their cells & no one answers. Left the cake at a neighbors with a very apologetic note and an offer for a free cake if they would give me another shot. On my way home, Natalie called & said that their niece had decided on Wednesday that she was getting married on Saturday, so they had to run up to Tremonton for the wedding and were postponing the party until Sunday! So, yeah! And after much scraping and making of new, good buttercream, this is what we ended up with. I'm just so glad I tried out that recipe with my friend's cake instead of a bride's. And that, my friends, is why I always leave like a half day of leeway before I have to deliver any wedding cake. (and yes, this cake is supposed to be tilted, it's one of those mad-hatter cakes. These pictures don't really look like it though, they just look kind of wierd.)