OK, so I’m not Martha Stewart. I decided to make a cake for my dad's birthday. I asked him what his favorite kind of cake
was and he responded with "ummmm…. " My
sister, the Cake/Pie Goddess, quickly jumped in with “Don’t you like carrot
cake?” If my mind really had gears, I
would have felt them whirring – carrots, I’d have to shred them, does it have
pineapple in it, should I make it gluten free, what about the frosting – cream cheese,
buttercream? Obviously, I’ve never made
a carrot cake before and obviously for some unknown reason I’m afraid to make a
carrot cake. But as my dad does, he
saved me from my own thoughts and said, “I like yellow cake with chocolate
frosting!”
That I felt I could do.
So for my dad’s birthday I concocted my very first yellow cake and my
very first chocolate frosting. Of
course, I had eaten both of these things before and even made the cake from a
boxed cake mix, but I had never made my own from scratch.
The Cake/Pie Goddess was out of town, so I was on my own for
this creation. I found two great recipes
on Martha Stewart’s website for yellow cake.
One was for Yellow Butter Cake and the other for a Simple Layer Cake. I decided to go with the simple
one for a few reasons: 1. Because it said it was simple and I figured I could
handle that and 2. It called for less butter and less eggs, which I figured was
a good way to lower fat and cholesterol intake.
And, yes, I know I probably just ruined cake for everyone.
Making the cake was actually pretty easy, especially using
an electric mixer. I’m rather new to the electric mixer. Before I got married I
never had one and just mixed everything by hand. What a work out! Now that I know how easy it is to mix things
together with the electric mixer, I may be baking more! As you probably know by now, I can’t follow a
recipe. I just can’t. That’s all there is to it. I substituted whole milk with almond/coconut
milk.
All was well until the two 9 inch cakes were baked and
cooled. Getting them out of the pan was
a real challenge. I didn’t use parchment
paper to line the pans as the recipe instructed. (Maybe I should learn to follow a recipe after all!) Instead, I greased and floured the bottoms of
the pans. Oops! The cakes stuck to the bottom of the pans and
I had to reconstruct them by pushing the cake pieces together into giant cake blobs. (No pictures for this because it was way too messy!)
Enter Chocolate Frosting.
I made a half recipe of Martha Stewart’s Ultimate Chocolate Frosting, again using almond/coconut milk instead of real milk. This frosting was surprisingly good! I don’t usually like a strong chocolate
flavor, but this recipe has changed my mind.
It had just the right combination of chocolate and vanilla to cause a
perfect chocolate frosting addiction.
Not only was it delicious, but it became the perfect edible binding to
hold the yellow cake together.
The cake itself definitely needed the frosting's flavor. It was missing something that I can't quite place. Maybe it needed the extra butter and eggs in the other recipe or maybe I should have doubled the vanilla. I'm not sure, so I guess I will have to make more cake to figure it out!
Martha Stewart, I am not.
My cake looked terrible, but it actually tasted great! It was made with love, creativity, and happy
birthday wishes for my dad. Happy
Birthday, Dad!
