Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I failed in my attempt to make a cake version of pignoli cookies for my boyfriend.

In baking, the outer perimeter of pignoli nuts I'd sprinkled on top disappeared into the batter, leaving a craggy, burnt center that made the cake look like a bumpy demonic eyeball.

I tried to cover the whole thing with a confectioner's sugar glaze + confectioner's sugar dusting, which a) exacerbated the eyeball problem, b) melted off the cake plate into crusty puddles on my kitchen floor and table, and c) somehow turned sickly yellow-green in pronounced lumpy clusters after about twenty minutes of contact with the cake, making it look like it was infested with mold.

As I am not independently wealthy, I have since stopped trying to be creative with almond paste and pignoli nuts.