Let Them Eat Cake!

One of my 2013 Kitchen Goals is to make a legit cake which means making a cake and icing from scratch and then icing it in a legit manner. When my friend Kate discovered this was my goal, she wanted in on the baking as well. You see, she was planning on making her own wedding cake because her mom had made her own wedding cake. She needed all the practice she could get.

Kate has a friend who has a cake business so she taught Kate a lot of things. Kate then turned around and taught me.  To prepare, we placed an Amazon order for what we like to call "the spinny thing" as well as off set spatulas for icing.

Our first test run was this Tiramisu cake which although it was far from being made from scratch, we got to test our icing skills.

After this test run, it was time to move on to the legit cake. I have a recently found love for strawberry cake so I knew that is what I wanted to do. Conveniently Sweetapolita (our cake baking crush) had a strawberry cake recipe. Note: I was hesitant to use this recipe because it uses strawberry gelatin powder and I thought this might take away from the "from scratch" properties. I did have a recipe that did not call for this (which is hard to find) but I decided go ahead and use Sweetapolita's recipe.

We decided to make a party out of it and had two of our friends join us.




I did receive some help from these girls, but I did most of the major parts since it was my goal.

While the layers cooled...

 

 ... we went to Mooyah Burger for dinner. Since I wasn't going to get enough sugar that night from licking both the batter and icing bowls, I made sure to get a milkshake (which is cheap if you get a kids meal).

Once we got back from dinner, it was time to start the icing process. I still have a lot of improving to do but I think it turned out great for a first attempt! It was tasty too!

Note: Since then, I have made one more legit cake- a red velvet cake. It did not turn out as well mainly due to the fact that I did not let the cake cool enough before taking it out of the pan. As a result it was a held together by icing, lopsided cake. However, it did taste good!

PS. You may be wondering- did we consume all of these cakes. We actually shared the first cake with work friends and the second I took to my home group.