Excavator Cake (the one that got flipped over in my car!!)

This little Excavator Cake was easy to make and perfect for that boy or man in your life who loves to play in the dirt! 

Do you ever need to rewind time for just a minute? A second? The day I decorated this little cake, I really really wanted a rewind button.

Here's what happened. I got up, decorated it and boxed it up. Then I loaded in my truck and got on the road to drive it 12 miles to meet my customer. And everything was just fine. I wasn't the slightest bit nervous. It was an easy day.

Until it wasn't.

Jump to:

• The cake was upside down/sideways in the box.
• Showing her the Excavator Cake.
• Some cake details for you:
• Shop for supplies here:

The cake was upside down/sideways in the box.

As I was turning into the parking lot I took my hand off the box and in a split second, it went from "good to go" to "upside down/sideways in the box." Just ONE second... and it was a mess.

Have any of you had this happen? How did you handle it?

This was a new customer for me - I'd only done one other order for her and I had no idea what kind of personality she had. Some are laid back, some are not and I just wasn't sure.

Thankfully she wasn't at our meeting point yet, so I jumped out and ran around to my passenger side of my truck. I grabbed the cake, flipped the box back upright and began to "pat" the frosting back into place as best I could. It had smashed into the side and top of the box so it was a pretty significant frosting mess.

I straightened the cake as best I could but there was no way I could get it back to the original look while sitting in my truck. I had no tools - nothing other than a few napkins on and. 

And then the customer pulled up beside me.

Showing her the Excavator Cake.

With no time to do anything else, I sucked it up, turned and showed the Excavator cake to her.

I explained what happened and offered to take it back home and fix it.

Because of the OREO "dirt" crumbs on top, there were cookie crumbs EVERYWHERE. Chocolate frosting covered the inside the box on once side, on the board, stuck to the lid, etc.

But thanks to the nature of the cake (mud, pile of dirt, tractor, rocks, etc.), she said it looked fine to her.

Her husband is a doctor but loves to "play" on his tractor when he's not working so she wanted a cake to reflect his hobby - not his job. She said her husband would never know the difference or how the cake was supposed to look.

She even said she might not have noticed the messed up cake either if I hadn't told her (except for the frosting mess in the box).

The more we talked, I learned that she was a generous kind woman - a Christian lady who was just happy that I made the cake for her last minute and had not a single complaint about the way it looked.

Wow - how sweet is that!?

I didn't have time to snap a pic, but it most assuredly did NOT still look like this.

The hill was pretty much smooshed flat all over the top. The "dirt" was no longer only on the hill. Instead it was covering the top and knocked off on the side and in the box.

One side no longer had texture because it had been flatted up against the side of the box and I didn't have any kind of tools (not even a plastic spoon) to try and really fix it.

But she was happy...and she took it right on home! There's no denying that I am blessed with some of the most understanding and kind clients ever.

Some cake details for you:

• I baked this cake in 7" round Magic Line pans.
• The flavor was Vanilla Coffee Cake with Chocolate Buttercream (except I used coffee for the liquid in the buttercream - like here).
• The video for how I added the lined texture to this cake is here.
• The dirt was crushed OREO cookies and the rocks were these jelly beans.
• I used a little toy excavator from a set like this one.
• The words were done with Windsor Groovy Clickstix letter cutters (uppercase here)

Shop for supplies here:

Offset Spatula

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Magic Line pans

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Vanilla Bean Paste

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Construction Toys

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Groovy Clickstix Cutters

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