Cole's Cake

So, remember my so very important dilemma?  Well, even though everyone said I should make the candy cake, I decided to make the other one mainly because it looked more like a birthday cake.  (Don't worry - the candy cake will be made for Father's Day, much to Lance's dismay.)  ((That was sarcasm.))  (((Sarcasm about Lance, not about the cake.  The cake will definitely be made.)))

This is the first cake I've made from scratch in quite a while.  I'm not sure why I did this, given my sordid history with cakes.  Stupid, stupid cakes.  (I did a whole cake-of-the-month thing in 2008.  You can check out my successes and failures there.)  Not that this cake was a failure; it just didn't turn out quite as planned.  First, I overbaked the cake a bit, dang it.  In my defense, I pulled it out when it was still a bit underdone, but obviously it just kept baking as it cooled on the counter.  Oh well.

My second mistake was a bit bigger.  I made this frosting, which is made with heavy cream and granulated sugar.  (Totally diet-friendly.)  Somehow last night, while I was making the frosting I accidentally put in 1/3 a cup of salt instead of the sugar.  It took me a while to figure out why things weren't working for me, and then I took a big taste.  DANG IT! And GROSS.  And very disappointing because I didn't have anymore heavy cream to make a another batch.

But no worries.  I just picked some up this morning after I went to Urgent Care for my eye infection.  Wait, what?  Oh yeah, I have an eye infection.  Who knows how or why.  Lucky me!  So I had to go to Wal-Mart and get some prescriptions and picked some heavy cream up as well.

By the way, I have a love/hate relationship with Wal-Mart's pharmacy.  I hate them because they are SOOO SLOOOW and don't bother calling to tell you when they don't have the medicine you need.  I love them because I bought three prescriptions today for $2.87.  It's hard to beat that.

Whoa - big tangent.  I haven't been going off on as many tangents lately, have you noticed?  I've missed you tangents...

Bah!  A tangent about a tangent!  Okay, back to the cake.

I made the frosting this afternoon, it tasted great, and the cake turned out like this:

Not so bad, right?  I saw the Teddy Grahams, marshmallows, and chocolate chips on a cake online and thought it looked cute and easy.  It was.

Halfway through decorating I realized that this was now a s'mores cake.  (The fact that it took me that long only shows my mental state lately.  I lose more and more brain cells with each child; just another reason why I will not be having another!)  Anywho, I luuurve s'mores.  They are now the epitome of summer to me.

Here's Cole practicing his candle blowing skills.  As seen in the video in the previous post, we obviously did not practice enough.

 

Happy happy birthday boy!  (Can you tell I liked this camera angle?)

Cole was quite pleased with the cake.  I don't know that he really understood that it was his birthday cake, but he knows what a cake is and was quite pleased that it was there.

Despite the dryness, I don't think the cake was that bad.  In fact, with the yummy frosting and glass of milk, it was quite yummy!  (But I think it will be back to the Cake Mix Doctor for me from now on!)