It's not giving up...it's self preservation

Well my fellow DBers, I must ashamedly admit that this month's challenge managed to thoroughly kick my ass.

Surprisingly, it was not the much belothed buttercream that did me in. No, in fact, I made a beautiful, shiny, fluffy buttercream on the first try. I caught it as it tried to curdle 4 table spoons before the butter was full incorporated. It came back together beautifully after giving it a little steam bath over the double boiler. So, no buttercream horror stories here.

No...it was the genoise. I don't know what I did wrong, honestly. Well, I know what happened the first time I made it. After reading that some people were having issue with the genoise drying out after cooking for 12 minutes, I opted for the lower end of the spectrum and baked for 10. Bad idea. It didn't get done all the way through. So, attempt #2, I thought it had done fine. Apparently not. There were spots that were still not fully cooked, the damn thing clung to the buttered parchment for dear life, ripping off half of the actual cake in the process.

I managed to still decorate it (minus the mushrooms) but I highly doubt it's edible as, at this point, it's basically a lot of buttercream, some raspberry real fruit jam, and maybe, somewhere in there, a tiny bit of genoise.

I must admit to being completely embarrassed. You know, if the buttercream had defeated me, fine...but a cake?!?! I can make a CAKE. Ugh. Chalk this one up to a bad experience.

(Oh, for anyone who's wondering. I didn't bother to waste the resources making the mushrooms since the cake it pretty much a lost cause. Seemed a little wasteful considering I don't like eating meringue.)