Hearts-Inside Cake... Or Not

After I had so much fun learning how to make the Polka Dot Cake...

I decided that I wanted to try it with hearts for Valentine's Day. It seemed so simple... and really, the hearts-inside part actually turned out pretty well...

It's just the rest of the execution that failed... miserably.
I'm hoping to give the hearts - or maybe another shape - another chance some time soon. But, if you want to try it yourself... and certainly get better results... let me tell you what worked, and what decidedly did NOT.

To make the hearts, I baked a Strawberry Cake, and added some extra pink coloring to make it brighter inside of the chocolate. (I should have added even more, actually.)

I then used a small heart cutter to cut the cake into heart shapes. (Similar to how made the Polka Dot Cake.)

All good, so far. Slap some chocolate batter on the top of the heart, before placing it into the pan, to make sure there was some batter in the dip of the heart.

Cover them up, bake them. ... all good!

Then came decorating day. I was feeling lazy, so instead of making my favorite Strawberry Icing that is awesome, I just added some pureed strawberries to regular buttercream icing.
Mistake #1:
The Decorators' Buttercream is a little different consistency than the Swiss Meringue Buttercream, so it just didn't work the way I'd planned. (And it didn't taste as good, either.)

Then, I didn't feel like going to the store to buy heavy cream to make the Ganache. That's okay, half-and-half is close enough, right?
Mistake #2: 
The half-and-half ganache never set up. It stayed runny. After more than an hour in the fridge... runny.

Then, being impatient as the ganache wouldn't set up, I decided it would be fine if I just spread a little, even if it was runny between the layer of icing, and the next layer of cake.
Mistake #3:
Slippery ganache on top of thick buttercream makes for an unstable middle of a cake.

So, then I frosted the poor thing, as it swung and swayed like a building in a magnitude 5,000 earthquake. It was around this point that I began to suspect this cake wasn't going to end as I'd hoped... but I still didn't suspect the disaster that was upon me.

I finally got a little of the non-ganache to stiffen up by overheating it in the microwave... and adding some more chocolate.

But genius that I am, it didn't occur to me that roughly icing the sides of the cake would mean that when the ganache dripped down the sides, it would look awful. And it did!

It's okay, I told myself, the inside. The inside will be great. So, I started cutting... a few small pieces to try to find the best hearts.

I still wasn't completely satisfied with the inside photos, so I decided, maybe if I cut it in half...
(This is where the scary music would play. duh-duh-duh!)

And she fell... the layers all slipped off one another, and landed in a massive pile, half upside down.

The disappointment!

Click the Links Below to See:Other Baking Fails & Fixes
The Polka Dot Cake
A Better Chocolate-Covered-Strawberry Cake

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