Saturday, June 7, 2008

1st Birthday part 1...The Saga of the Cake

Miss Scarlett, I don't know nothin about makin no birthday cakes.

Here's the thing about self-fulfilling prophecies...they're self-fulfilling. I do not do well in pressure filled cooking situations. In my intense desire to not screw anything up...I inevitably screw something up.

I had one job to do, bake the cake and then Mandy would come and help me decorate it. So I purchased 2 boxes of Betty Crocker white cake mix. Are you with me so far? Nothing groundbreaking? Didn't think so. Then I baked the 2 cakes. Here is where the problems begin.

Apparently when you make white cake you're only supposed to use egg whites. No one informed me of this. Well the instructions did, but I just looked at the picture of 3 whole eggs and proceeded. So now I have 2 pound cakes. Which is fine but not what I was going for.

After I cooled the cakes... I try to remove them from the pan. It does not go well. As I stare at the crumbling heap of cake I have created a strange calm comes over me and I go into shock.

I call my Mom...

Me: Mom the cakes don't look good.

Mom: What's wrong?

Me: They kind of fell apart.

Mom: Did you grease the pan?

Me: Yes.

Mom: Did you put flour in it?

Me: What?

I call Mandy...

Me: The cake does not look good

Mandy: Did you grease the pan?

Me: Yes

Mandy: Did you put flour in it?

Me: No one has ever mentioned this to me!!

I call my sister (who has been married less than a year)

Me: I messed up the cake and it fell apart

Lindsay: Did you grease the pan and put flour in it?

Me: HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS!?!?!

So now I have a crumbling cake which I made worse by putting the layers on top of each other instead of leaving them separate.

Ben comes home and I show him the cake. He says yeah that doesn't look too good. I glare at his back.

Mandy comes over, she walks into the kitchen...and laughs. Fears are confirmed.

So she begins to try and fix the cake, which looks like this (it looked even worse before I started taking pictures)....



At this point we kind of throw out any preconceived design we may have had for the cake and just try to cover holes and keep it from falling over.

At this point we are laughing hysterically because it's ridiculously bad. It keeps being funny until people start to show up and then I get really embarrassed and feel tears coming on.

After MUCH hard work by Mandy. The cake, while not perfect by any means, at least resembles a cake. Also Mandy is excellent at writing with icing. Hire her for all your iced writing needs.


At least it tasted really good, even if I did use whole eggs and baked it too long. Thanks for the save Mandy!

Coming up...the party.

5 comments:

Bethany said...

Did Aidan eat the cake? I love babies with frosting pictures. Just tell Aidan it was delicious and perfect in every way and that is what she will always believe.

myra said...

Isn't it funny how much pressure we put on ourselves when it comes to 1st Birthdays? It's up there with weddings which means inevitably something will go wrong.
The cake looked great! And egg whites tip was new to me too. ;)

Anonymous said...

I'm still laughing hysterically. I wish I could've been there for The Great Cake Fiasco of '08. I bet it tasted delicious, though -- egg yolks and all. :)

And I have no idea where I learned that you're supposed to flour the pan. Probably my mom. But does the box not say to do so too??

Micah and Tara Hobbs said...

I had a similair fiasco on Kadence's first b-day. I called Elizabeth crying and she came to my rescue. I think she helped me for like 4 hours trying to fix what I had messed up. What I learned - Target makes GREAT cakes!!

Amanda said...

awww, sorry to hear that it was a bit too stressful!! I think it turned out perfect though! ;)