...oh, its a CAKE!

Those of you that read my studio blog yesterday saw this picture with a "what is it" tag line.

Just as a reminder to anyone that's not keeping up, my daughter is getting married this summer, and we are playing with different ideas for the cake.

The purchase of all of that cake mix was strickly one of economics....when the store puts them on sale for $0.69 each, we stock up.

So the answer to "what is it?" is....wedding cake!



....and yes, this is a cake too.

What you need to know is that I've probably made all of half a dozen (including this one) cakes that I actually took out of the pan and frosted, etc., etc., preferring instead the ease of baking in a 9x13 pan and just frosting over the top

Wedding cake can't be done that way....so, some practice is required here just to test all of our theories, ie:

Theory 1: Can we use liquid egg whites that come in the little boxes at the supermarket instead of wasting all those yolks from whole eggs.

Answer: yup, that's what I used in the test cake and it rose just fine

Theory 2: Can we bake cakes from a standard box at this altitude (over 6000 feet) and have them come out right (remembering with horror our escapades with the angel cake before Christmas)?

Answer: yup, they rose okay, came out of the pan fine, just needed a wee bit more time to be done than the box said (which is probably a function of oven rather than altitude)

Theory 3: Can I actually do the base frosting?

Answer: uh, well, maybe.....here's the problems encountered with this little experiment....

first off, I don't have a pair of round cake pans that are actually the same size (I told you, this hasn't been done much!) But I did have 2 square ones, so I decided to go with those.

The problem here is that square pans don't have straight sides and so to frost the cake I had to trim off the edges (think of this as cutting the crusts off the bread on a peanut butter sandwich ... BEFORE you try to spread the peanut butter!) Bad idea!

The second issue was that I used a commercial (from a tub) frosting, and because it didn't taste like anything (as in it was just sweet), I added some flavoring (almond), but that changed the spreading texture.

The third issue also had to do with the frosting....I also didn't have any paste food color on hand (I seem to remember giving what was left of the good containers of this stuff to my daughter....maybe not), so I had to use liquid, and...... you guessed it, more texture issues

So, here are today's conclusions:

1. We can bake cakes and even have them taste good (I did add a little almond flavoring to the cake mix too, and that worked out just fine)

2. If I'm truly going to test this frosting thing, I need to bake some cakes that I don't have to trim off the edges of. (I found 2 heart shaped pans in the cabinet this morning.....guess what we'll be baking for next week!)

3. I need to get some proper colors to play with .... oh goodie, an excuse to go to either Michaels or Joanns (evil den's of eniquity!!)

4. I was told last night by our cake guru in California that there actually is a daisy tip that Wilton puts out....guess we better look into that too.

Our excursions into making daisies out of marzipan will be fun too.....

so, watch this space!