Trying to be fancy...

My mom came home from the hospital yesterday after having a double masectomy and lymph node removal so I thought I'd be fancy and make the 2011 Southern Living winner of their "white cake" contest.
Here is a picture of what the cake is supposed to look like:

This is what my cake started off as.  Basically it's a layer of gingerbread cake with a silky chocolate ganache, then you top it off with toffee chips and do that 3 times then the icing is a whipped cream with ginger infusion.

I followed all the directions to the letter but alas when I tried to put my second layer on it fell apart.

Did I mention that this cake takes NINE hours to make!!!  Yea, I was furious that all my work ended in a hot mess.  In the end I had to salvage it I just threw it in a large bowl poured the whipped cream topping on  it, and made a "sort of" trifle.  It still tasted delicous but I was totally bummed.

So the lesson learned is NEVER make this cake again, and I would warn anyone else who's considering making this marathon cake to reconsider and go with something a bit easier.