Monday, July 13, 2009

Birthday Cake

Birthdays should always be celebrated by cake. Something about a birthday with no cake strikes me as a bit sad. Whether it is some store bought thing stuffed full of faux ingredients and sugar or something a bit more refined and decadent, a birthday just isn't a birthday without a cake to cut.

So, having missed out last year, I needed to get one this year and so I thought I would bake one myself.

I know.

Yes, I KNOW!!!

My experiences with baking have been.... challenging to say the (very) least.

But I had no choice. It was either buying one for myself or baking one and I thought baking one sounded a bit less sad!

Chocolate cake being my favorite, I thought I'd try the Black Magic Cake.

So while the babe was having her nap, I got the ingredients out and had the dry ingredients all mixed when she woke up with a vengeance. Crying babe in arm, I quickly threw in the wet ingredients and turned on the mixer much to her distress. I couldn't stop, my chocolate cake was at stake! I undermixed it but had to stop before the wee one went into turbo mode. Slopped the results into two pans and baked for requisite time.

Out came these slightly unevenly lumped cakes.


I debated for the rest of the afternoon regarding how exactly to put the cake together. Was it to be store bought icing or was I going to actually attempt to make some kind of frosting? I wasn't sure due to the whiny nature of the babe.

Finally I found a recipe for which I had all of the ingredients at hand, this chocolate buttercream frosting. So to more tears and screams, I whipped it up. Sadly, I was a bit too free handed with the milk so it was a bit.... melty.

Put together, it looked like... well to be frank, it looked like a big turd.

Thankfully it tasted ok if a bit too moist but then again, I never believe fudginess to be a bad thing.

The stars must have been all aligned beautifully so my turd cake would turn out edible.

3 comments:

susan said...

Jessie, it looked pretty good until you iced it. But maybe it was too hot in London that day so it melted?

when you come back to HK I am going to give you some baking lessons!

Viv said...

Belated happy birthday!!!

I agree with the above comment that it looked fine before the icing :) I would even go as far to call it a small triumph (as the last time you documented any baking involved breaking glass at very early hours).

and you are so funny :) I smiled at your description of the cake!

Anonymous said...

you must be the first person in the world to make turd cake sound remotely appetising. Thanks, I had a good larf about this;)