Cake or Death?

Uh, cake please.

Julie has decided that each Friday she would make a cake from scratch - I have been lucky enough to taste many of the sweet creations and was very impressed. I declared that I too will make cake from scratch.

After such a bold statement I realized - I don't really know or like to cook so I decided to start at a level that was more in my league - Duncan Hines Yellow Cake Mix and Chocolate frosting. After purchasing the supplies I felt I needed to do something more so I decided to try and make a layered cake.

After making the batter, I transferred it into two 8" round cake pans and put it in the oven. All was going well… I still haven't mastered the oven, but fortunately I have vocal husband who informed me that convection was the only way to bake a cake - he didn't inform me that it might cook faster in a convection oven. When I took the pans out the tops were a little brown - but I set them aside to cool.

The cakes sadly did not come out of the pan as I had hoped. It seems that one side of the cake is heavier and immediately fell out leaving the rest of its body in the pan. I did manage to place most of the cake on the plate and figured that frosting was as good as glue. The frosting wouldn't spread on the broken cake - in fact it was acting like a cake lint roller picking up all of the cake crumbles and mixing them into the frosting.

I did the best I could and added the second layer on. When cakes cook they dome up - and two domes don't lay flat on each other. The second layer collapsed onto the first and more cake breakage. I slathered (to the best of my ability) the rest of the cake frosting on to try and hide the structural damage.

What I created was a giant pile of crumbs slathered in chocolate frosting that was up for ugliest cake award - but man was it yummy.

Julie is an inspiration, but from now on I may just be inspired to drop by her house when I visit for piece of her fabulous cake.