six years

In celebration of our sixth anniversary, I decided to bake a cake. Not just any cake, I though it would be cool to make what we had for our wedding (sort of, at least). But, since I object to paying $2 for a cake mix I decided to make the cake from scratch. That decision probably wouldn't have been so bad had I, first, decided to use crisco (yes, the same stuff I used in the cake batter and so had already pulled out once) to grease the pan, and second, decided to stay in the kitchen while it was cooking. Sadly, I chose to grease the pan with Pam, and then walked Derrick out to the garage, where he proceeded to pump up his tires and adjust the height of his bike seat while I watched, all the while thinking my cake would take 30 to 35 minutes to bake. Yeah. Turns out our oven is 25 degrees hot and a 9 inch cake only takes about 25 minutes to cook anyway.

Two of the three cakes came out more or less intact, but the third was unsalvageable, so I let Sylvia have her way with those cakes.



For my second attempt I used this recipe from the smitten kitchen, which worked much, much better, not least because it was intended to be a three layer cake. Oh, except I forgot to add vanilla--a small detail I remembered about 3 minutes after putting the cakes in the oven. Oops.

While the cake cooked and then cooled I sliced and cooked strawberries (really, I just warmed them. They were still pretty much raw), and then blended the hot berries into a scrumptious puree that eventually separated the layers of my cake. My kitchen, though hot, smelled divine.



Derrick called to let me know he was coming home at about 5, so I threw together the swiss buttercream from smitten kitchen. I wanted to get pictures of the frosting as I made it, but while futzing with the settings, the frosting turned from gloppy soup into something that looked more like mayonnaise (as promised), but tasted oh so much better! That stuff is my new favorite icing. It tastes like fresh sweet cream, but spreads like a dream. I also followed the instructions to freeze the cakes and put on a crumb coat before frosting it and I have to say, those are some great steps to add. That really was the easiest cake I've ever put together.


Sylvia had to make do with watermelon, since we waited until she was asleep to cut my concoction.