Cake Tribulations
It all started innocently enough. My pretty cake stand was empty. It is a holiday and the girls are behaving fairly aimlessly. "You want to bake a cake?" I asked.
We only had one can of whipped cream cheese frosting. The girls chose a red velvet cake from among several mixes we had on hand. Good combination. They started to work while I messed around on my computer in another room.
When I emerged to see how they were doing, I saw they had out one heart-shaped 8-inch pan and a cake pan for a dozen mini-muffins. They were spooning insanely red batter into the mini muffin tins. "You didn't flour the pans?" I asked. "No, were we supposed to?" I read from the box: Dust Lightly With Flour. Okay. They hadn't used shortening either, just the spray. Might have been olive oil spray for all I know. So, I took the remaining pans and floured them over the oil.
They baked the minis and the heart together. At the appointed time, the girls got the pans out of the oven. The minis were slightly overbaked and the heart was overflowing and you could smell the drips burning on the bottom of the oven. "Oh well, it was fun, anyway!" they said, and retreated to their rooms.
I came to survey the results. Hmmm. I frosted the mini cupcakes and added sprinkles, cause sprinkles cover a host of imperfections. I didn't want to use too much frosting, because I was going to need it to cover the unsightly, boiled over heart cake. So, I did a dozen with frosting and the rest with some decorative frosting from a tube. I put them all on another cake stand and covered with a dome, hoping they would soften up a bit. So far so good.
On to the heart cake. Seattle suggested I cut off the "love handles" (pun intended), which was the extra batter that oozed over the pan edge. I did. I frosted the sides, covering all the ragged edges. I frosted the top liberally and then said, "Okay, now what?"
"Let's decorate it all pretty! I think you should put little red hearts around... scattered. Like here, and here, and here." Mary said, pointing strategically to spots on the heart. "With what?" I asked. "With those pretty gel tubes," she said. "Okay, but first, I'd like to do scallops all around the edge, you know, like a Valentine," I said. "In YELLOW?" she asked. "Yes, it will be cheerful, and a good contrast to the red." (Plus it was the only color I had enough of to do this decoration.) She humored me.
I think you can already sense trouble coming.
So, as I started with the yellow scallops Mary got out the pretty gel icings in the tubes. She handed me red. I placed the little hearts just as she said. "I want another color now. How about orange?" I said. She thought it was risky, but played along. I added orange hearts. Hmmm. They were very dark orange; not much different from the red... "Any other colors?" I asked. I saw a purple in the pile. "No, purple comes out almost black," she said. I picked up the purple and squeezed a tiny bit onto my fingertip. Yep. Black. I licked it off. "Wow! That tastes awful. Really concentrated flavor.... oh, no. Mary, what IS this stuff? This is not decorative gel! This is concentrated FOOD COLORING! You're not supposed to eat blobs of food coloring! It's probably hazardous to your health. It's going to turn our teeth red!"
Here is what the ill-fated sweet heart of a cake looked like.
We can't leave it like this. "Well," Mary says, "what if we just lift off the blobs?" No, that won't work. "What if we make swirls with them?" Oh, now that is very risky. But it could be fun. Or disasterous. You decide:
We used a walnut pick, the end of a pickle fork and a tooth pick for the work. And after the swirling, Mary added dots all over and said, "Now it looks like the surface of the moon." Good lord.
We weren't loving the swirls, and we realized that we'd reached the point of no return. So, we said, "Well, what if we just swirl it ALL together? You know, like those swirl Easter egg kits. That could be kind of artsy."
You see where this is going.
Now it looks like the face of Jupiter or Saturn.
To our credit, we stopped there. But, the drips and swipes from the "decorative gel," which was really concentrated food coloring, are still stained into my hands, on my counter top, on my teeth and I think my lips are tingling from licking it off my fingers. If you read of a family found mysteriously comatose in their home on Presidents' Day, tell the papers it is no mystery. They keeled over from Red Velvet Jupiter cake poisoning.
We only had one can of whipped cream cheese frosting. The girls chose a red velvet cake from among several mixes we had on hand. Good combination. They started to work while I messed around on my computer in another room.
When I emerged to see how they were doing, I saw they had out one heart-shaped 8-inch pan and a cake pan for a dozen mini-muffins. They were spooning insanely red batter into the mini muffin tins. "You didn't flour the pans?" I asked. "No, were we supposed to?" I read from the box: Dust Lightly With Flour. Okay. They hadn't used shortening either, just the spray. Might have been olive oil spray for all I know. So, I took the remaining pans and floured them over the oil.
They baked the minis and the heart together. At the appointed time, the girls got the pans out of the oven. The minis were slightly overbaked and the heart was overflowing and you could smell the drips burning on the bottom of the oven. "Oh well, it was fun, anyway!" they said, and retreated to their rooms.
I came to survey the results. Hmmm. I frosted the mini cupcakes and added sprinkles, cause sprinkles cover a host of imperfections. I didn't want to use too much frosting, because I was going to need it to cover the unsightly, boiled over heart cake. So, I did a dozen with frosting and the rest with some decorative frosting from a tube. I put them all on another cake stand and covered with a dome, hoping they would soften up a bit. So far so good.
On to the heart cake. Seattle suggested I cut off the "love handles" (pun intended), which was the extra batter that oozed over the pan edge. I did. I frosted the sides, covering all the ragged edges. I frosted the top liberally and then said, "Okay, now what?"
"Let's decorate it all pretty! I think you should put little red hearts around... scattered. Like here, and here, and here." Mary said, pointing strategically to spots on the heart. "With what?" I asked. "With those pretty gel tubes," she said. "Okay, but first, I'd like to do scallops all around the edge, you know, like a Valentine," I said. "In YELLOW?" she asked. "Yes, it will be cheerful, and a good contrast to the red." (Plus it was the only color I had enough of to do this decoration.) She humored me.
I think you can already sense trouble coming.
So, as I started with the yellow scallops Mary got out the pretty gel icings in the tubes. She handed me red. I placed the little hearts just as she said. "I want another color now. How about orange?" I said. She thought it was risky, but played along. I added orange hearts. Hmmm. They were very dark orange; not much different from the red... "Any other colors?" I asked. I saw a purple in the pile. "No, purple comes out almost black," she said. I picked up the purple and squeezed a tiny bit onto my fingertip. Yep. Black. I licked it off. "Wow! That tastes awful. Really concentrated flavor.... oh, no. Mary, what IS this stuff? This is not decorative gel! This is concentrated FOOD COLORING! You're not supposed to eat blobs of food coloring! It's probably hazardous to your health. It's going to turn our teeth red!"
Here is what the ill-fated sweet heart of a cake looked like.
We can't leave it like this. "Well," Mary says, "what if we just lift off the blobs?" No, that won't work. "What if we make swirls with them?" Oh, now that is very risky. But it could be fun. Or disasterous. You decide:
We used a walnut pick, the end of a pickle fork and a tooth pick for the work. And after the swirling, Mary added dots all over and said, "Now it looks like the surface of the moon." Good lord.
We weren't loving the swirls, and we realized that we'd reached the point of no return. So, we said, "Well, what if we just swirl it ALL together? You know, like those swirl Easter egg kits. That could be kind of artsy."
You see where this is going.
Now it looks like the face of Jupiter or Saturn.
To our credit, we stopped there. But, the drips and swipes from the "decorative gel," which was really concentrated food coloring, are still stained into my hands, on my counter top, on my teeth and I think my lips are tingling from licking it off my fingers. If you read of a family found mysteriously comatose in their home on Presidents' Day, tell the papers it is no mystery. They keeled over from Red Velvet Jupiter cake poisoning.
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