Have Your Cake And Eat It, Too

My dear Granny had her 80th birthday bash yesterday and, in preparation for the event, I volunteered to make the cake. I decided to be ambitious and try for a three-tiered, fondant covered, raspberry and lemon-filled monster cake. From scratch.

Little knowing what was in store.

I gathered the ingredients in multiple trips, since each time I got home with the supplies, I would realize with extreme frustration that I had forgotten something.

I set about whipping up the cake batter - quite a process with only my arm for a mixer. The oven in my apartment's little kitchen is from the seventies, and the elements are a little like Saturday Night Fever: Hot in places and crap in others. My cakes were coming out severely lopsided. Two dozen eggs and five hours later, I gave up and went back to the grocery store.

Remember when I said I little knew what was in store? There were the cake mixes: Three for four dollars. In the store. I bought them and went home.

Seriously, friends, they taste just as good as the homemade version. I'm not usually about the easy way out, but in this instance, those mixes were like a gift from Heaven. (As my mom likes to say: "That's why God invented Duncan Heins").

I filled the many layers with lemon curd and raspberry filling, iced them with buttercream, inserted dowels for support, made some mint-green fondant, rolled out the playdough-like fondant and smoothed it over the cakes, attached ribbon, wrapped 'em all up, and called it quits.

After two full days, my creation was complete!

I must admit, it was a pretty cake all stacked and decorated as it was with yellow and purple pansies.

But looks can be deceiving, can't they? I put a forkful of cake in my mouth and it was...Dry. Hmm...Definitely dry.

Luckily, my family loves me, and nobody said anything. But it goes to show, don't spend too much time worrying about looks while ignoring the inside.

You'll end up hard and dry as a graham cracker.

(*As a shout-out to my awesome mother-in-law, today's picture is the cake she made for our wedding. Pretty good for her first try. It was a looker AND tasted great.)