....to bake my sweet lil' Lovey's birthday cake. Usually we buy birthday cakes for $30 at Safeway. For a family of 5 that's $150 a year--for flour, eggs, and sugar. I mean, c'mon, what kind of frugal wife am I to keep throwing money around like that?
Since I'm not a baker, I had to get a few supplies: cake pans, a cake carrier, frosting tips. And since I couldn't decide whether to make from scratch or a box I had to get ingrediants for both: cream of tartar, almond extract, other-stuff-that-escapes-me-at-the-moment. You get the idea. When all was said and done I'd spent around $50, but that's OK because I can reuse the supplies, plus I'm baking with love!
As the sun sank in the sky, I decided I'd best go with a boxed cake because it was almost time to make dinner too. The kidlets and I mixed and stirred and made a mess, but wow did it smell great! The aroma gave me hope...false hope. When I tried to get the cakes out of the 9" round pans, they stuck. A lot. So much that when I finally got BOTH cakes out, they broke apart.
Sigh.
Kidlets went to bed, and I went for round 2. Good thing I bought an extra box. This time everything came out of the pans, but I had no idea how hard it is to decorate.
I'm a writer not an artist.
Anyhoo....I'm reasonably certain this is the sorriest looking $50 in town. I'll chalk it up to experience.
On a lighter note, we also celebrated the day by heading for the wild animal park. Check out our encounter with the giraffe!
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9 comments:
LOL I had a similar experience with Little Miss's first cake. We moms know its the thought that counts ;)
I think sponge Bob looks awesome!!!
Hint, to bake cakes, grease pan thoroughly with margarine and then flour the pan. Drop a spoonful of flour into the greased pan and then shake it around until it's all covered with it. I never have trouble with my baked goods if I've greased and floured, but have had trouble with just greased pans. Don't give up, it gets much, much, easier each time!
Your cake is adorable! And wow, that's a giraffe encounter!
LOL, Georgiana. I'm sure the next cake will be even better. :)
That's cute! You did a great job! I used to make my sons cakes like that till he was thirteen!
Thank you for the cake compliments. Hopefully they WILL get better with practice--not that my waistline needs additional attempts ;)
Next time I will try the margarine/flour combo since the cooking spray only had a 50% success ratio...
I didn't have much success with cakes until I learned a couple of things:
Let cake cool BEFORE you take out of the pan and frost!
Try freezing cake (or putting in frig) before you frost!
Adding extra frosting really helps to cover the big chunks of missing cake!
And Big Bird looks awesome...oh, wait that's Sponge Bob! [Barnicles!]
LOL At least you and the kids had fun baking. :-) I'm not a baker myself so I can totally relate. What a trooper you are for going on to round 2. I'm impressed!!!
I never thought about putting it in the freezer before frosting. Must remember that.
Sharon--it was just too late to hit the store. LOL!!!
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