What Goes into Soap Cake Making

Soap cake making definitely takes more time and requires more attention to details and planning, pretty much like baking a real special occasion cake!  It's so time consuming plus the fact that people always think it's too pretty to use that makes me not wanting to do more often.  The easiest soap cake is done all in one step, pour the cake and make enough soap batter to set aside for pipping.

But then you see the bare sides when you cut into slices.

I wanted to try more like a real decorated cake, make the body first then pipe the whole entire outside.  In this case I cannot do it in one step.  I have to pour the cake body first, have it firm enough to take it out of the mold the next day.

 I really like this marble look, felt bad to move on to the 2nd stage of covering it up with "frosting".  But everything was ready and waiting to go.  At least I took some pictures before I covered it up.

 Unfortunately I underestimated the amount of frosting I need (shows you baking is not my thing, LOL).  This 2 step project soon became 3 steps...

I meant to pipe rosettes all over the cake sides and top but the pipping tip I have is too big for the job.  It looks so easy watching youtube videos of pastry chefs decorating their cakes but when I actually did it myself... oh boy.

Dilema when cutting, couldn't see where to cut, had to constantly look under the cake to find the inner points of the "petal" shaped cake.  Drawing cut lines on top of all that pipping is proven difficult.  It looks very pretty, but I don't know if I would decorate a cake this way anymore.  I have to agree with my husband, it is so not practical!