Let Them Eat Cake

We've had two birthdays within the past three days, so we've had a lot of cake.  On Friday, we celebrated Steve's dad's birthday and I made a cake.  I did a yellow cake from scratch with a recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, as well as a butter frosting.  I divided the cake batter between my two 1/4 size baking sheets.  One of them had parchment on the bottom so I could turn out the layer, while I left the other layer in the pan.  I spread the one in the pan with frosting, then turned the other layer topside down and frosted that.   My cake decorating skills need some practice, but this is how it turned out.

I pressed sprinkles into the sides, in case the picture doesn't show it too well.  The cake turned out kind of dry and tough, I think I beat the batter a little too long.  Never the less, Rowan thinks he needs a piece everytime we pass it.

Today, it was Chris's birthday and she requested the Chocolate Cream Cake from the Lion House Classics cookbook.  It's a devil's food cake (from a mix) layered with stabilized whip cream, which has gelatin in it.  It's frosted with a chocolate frosting, the recipe for which is also in the book.  Everything was going beautifully: the layers baked perfectly, I was able to cut them without any problem, the whip cream and the frosting went together flawlessly.  I didn't have any problems until I tried to frost the cake.  The stupid frosting wouldn't spread and I was loosing my cool since we were going into Granny's for dinner and the time to leave was fast approaching.  I yelled at the cake and at Rory (poor guy).  The layers were sliding and the cream was oozing out from in between them.  Just when it was time to leave, I took a deep breath, and had a "duh" moment.  My frosting was WAY too thick.  It was just right when I made it, but it sat for a while since the cake wasn't quite cool.  I scraped what I could salvage off the cake and added some more milk.  It went on like a dream, although I was in a hurry so I was slopping chocolate frosting everywhere.  I put some of the extra cream in a pastry bag and piped a shell border around the top and bottom.

Chris said it was just what she wanted.

I did have one more little issue.  When I added more milk, I added just a hair too much, and then the car was warm, so the frosting was kind of running off the sides and pooling around the bottom of the cake.  I just scraped it off after putting it in the fridge for a little bit, then added the border.

Lately, I haven't been able to make a cake without having some issue.  Most of you probably know about Rowan's birthday cake.  I was tired and in a hurry, but I wanted to do a cake from scratch.  When I pulled it out of the oven,  it looked like it had fallen, but not really.  I'm not sure how to explain it.  We decorated  it and went on with the festivities.  The cake was good, but different.  It was really rich, dense and moist, which was great, because a lot of chocolate cakes (as this was) seem dry to me.  A few days later I went back and looked at the recipe and discovered where I deviated from the instructions.  It called for 3/4 cup butter, but, as I said, I was tired, so I saw 3/4 and thought, "Well, there are four sticks of butter in a box, I should use three sticks".  It made perfect sense to me at the time, but that's TWICE the amount of butter!  No wonder it was good.

I think my favorite cake mistake is one Steph actually made.  She posted the incident on her blog.  She is such a good sport to share it with the rest of us.