"2 Legit 2 Quit" Gold Drip Cake

An alternative title for this post would be "The Murphy's Law Drip Cake" or maybe "How I Discovered I Was Definitely Not Legit Enough." Just about everything that possibly could go wrong with this cake... did go wrong. Read below for the full lamentable story, or if you're short on time, just scroll down to the bottom to see the unfortunate final photos.

1. The first attempted chocolate cake layers I baked completely crumbled out of the cake pans (I've never had this happen before - the mixture of "goop" that I use (equal parts flour, shortening, and vegetable oil) has always worked perfectly at encouraging cakes to come out of the pan smoothly)
2. For the second attempt at baking the chocolate cake layers, I tried to avoid the crumbling by lining the cake pans with parchment circles. However, one of them immediately sunk down and cratered when I took it out of the oven, making it unusable.
3. Third attempt at chocolate cake layers with parchment circles: successful.

4. My batch of Italian Meringue buttercream frosting absolutely failed, and I had to start over with American buttercream.
5. I had tested out Candy Melts last week to make sure they'd work to create the drip effect, and they worked perfectly. With this cake? The first two batches of chocolate burned. I tried using a different melting method with the third batch - it still burned. Finally, I decided to use royal icing (the same kind of icing I use on my cookies) to create the drip effect.

6. The royal icing (which usually dries very fast on cookies) absolutely WOULD. NOT. DRY. I needed it to crust over before I could paint it with my new Rolkem "Super Gold" dust. By 3:45 a.m. I decided to stick it in the fridge overnight in the hopes it would be dry by 8 a.m.
7. At 8 a.m., the icing had just barely crusted, but was still wet underneath. I was able to carefully paint the Super Gold over the drip. I sighed in relief that the issues with this cake were over.

And then I put the cake in my car.

Remember how I mentioned the royal icing was still wet underneath? The vibrations of the car caused multiple icing mudslides.

I've successfully transported buttercream cakes, fondant cakes, multiple-tiered cakes... but a cake with wet royal icing on top will not transport.

Even though the final result was visually less than impressive, I'm still confident that the cake tasted great. I'm also going to figure out what went wrong with those silly Candy Melts and try again to make a great-looking drip cake.

*sigh*