May Cakes

I'm finally getting around to telling you about the cakes I made last month, now that this month is almost over. I lost a lot of the pictures I thought I had taken, so I'll just have to tell you the exciting adventures I had trying to make a Mother's Day cake. But first, here's a picture of my dad-in-law-to-be's birthday cupcakes. Because they're much cuter than anything else you're going to see or read in this blog post.

Before setting out to make these, I didn't realize how few Peanuts main characters there are, nowhere near 24. I also didn't realize how many relatives Snoopy has.

Back to the Mother's Day cake. I don't know if I've mentioned before that all four of Brian's brothers live in Reno, so once or twice a week EVERYONE gets together to hang out or have dinner. It's super fun, and completely weird to me, because all of my siblings had moved out of the house by the time I was 10 and since then we all get together in one place less and less often. Last Christmas was the first time in seven years. It was a little overwhelming the first time I decided to make dinner for everyone and realized there were 10 adults and 5 kids to feed. But I love it!

Anywho, for Mother's Day, everyone was going to get together at Brian's brother's house, and he asked me to make a cake. Of course I agreed, and was super excited. I know that Brian's mom likes red velvet cake, so I thought I'd take a shot at it. I had also seen lots of cute layer cakes all over the interwebs with different colored layers. I had been dying to make a cute pink to red one, and figured this was the perfect opportunity. (What the cake was supposed to look like, only red.)

As often seems to happen, particularly when I really want something to turn out well, I somehow found myself not even starting to make the cake until 9 or 10 pm the night before the big day. And Murphy's law took full effect. Murphy and I are great friends, we hang out all the time.

Problem One: I had used up about half of my red food coloring, but mistakenly thought that half a pot of Wilton's no taste red would be enough for just one little cake. Not true. The layers ended up ranging from sickly beige to light peach. I wish I had pictures to prove it, but you probably don't, they weren't pretty. How in the world do people make red velvet cake such a dark red? For an entire cake, not just one layer?? With regular food coloring instead of the super concentrated fondant colors I used??? If anyone knows where I can get some magical red food coloring that actually works, please tell me. Until then, I'll just try to avoid anything red.

Problem 2: I fell asleep. While the cake was in the oven. The very last layer that had finally gotten almost kind of sort of red. I fall asleep while cooking more than I ought to admit. It's a problem that comes from cooking at 3 am.

For a fleeting moment, I actually thought about using it anyway. But I didn't want anyone to break their teeth.

Problem 3: I thought I had some sort of mixing super strength and that I could whip up a beautiful fluffy cream cheese frosting with only a rubber scraper. I don't know what I was thinking, apparently my brain was asleep the entire time, even when I was awake and semi-functioning. It seemed like a good idea, because I didn't want to wake everyone up by using the stand mixer.

How in the world did people make frosting before electric mixers?

Problem 4: I don't know how to make frosting. In the morning, I came to my senses at least a little and used the stand mixer instead, but it ended up way too soft. Maybe because there wasn't any room in the fridge so I just covered it and left it on the counter for the two hours I slept.

Much better, but I don't think cream cheese frosting is meant for decorating.

Problem 5: I don't know how to use frosting. I haven't done much decorating with frosting, because fondant is much easier for me. But you can't have red velvet cake without cream cheese frosting, so fondant just wasn't going to cut it. But of course I forgot that I don't know how to use frosting, so I tried to copy the cutest fanciest frosted cake I could find.

It looks okay. If you squint a little. And step back a few feet. If you're wondering what I was shooting for, or just want to look at some eye candy instead of all these eye-rotten-tomatoes, go here.

Problem 6: James lives 30 minutes away from Brian. I finished the cake just barely in time to drive it over to the party, but as you might guess, this cake didn't travel well. As you can see in the picture above, the frosting was already to the very very edge of the plate. Add to that my wonderfully soft creamy frosting, a hot day, and a moving car. The frosting slowly shlumped down during the entire car ride, and by the time we got there I had become part of the cake plate. I didn't get any frosting on myself or the car though, so there's something at least. And despite everything, it was delicious. Even I ate a slice, and I hate cake.

And just in case this Mother's Day cake isn't enough of a disaster for you, here's a picture of the Father's Day cake I made last week.

The kids put on the jelly beans, I haven't sunken quite that low. But I did frost it and draw the tie, so I guess that's not much better.