So as my roommate/housemate's birthday neared, I began to think of things I could bake for her. I know she loves chocolate, so how fitting to make a chocolate cake!... or, how BORING! Okay, let me just explain myself- First of all didn't have much time on my hands because of midterms that week, and I just didn't know what to make especially with my budget. This cake is from scratch though... NO cake mix here! I hope at least that counts.
While baking in the oven, it just didn't seem right to me. Well, I’m not really sure if it's supposed to look "pretty" while it's still in the oven, but I just wasn't feeling this. I hate when I start doubting myself.
Okay, I change my mind- Once these came out and rested for about a half an hour, they sank down, colored correctly, and set really nicely.
Well, except for the center. I did the whole toothpick thing and it appeared fine. Since the recipe was a "moist" chocolate cake, I assumed the appearance of the middle equaled moist.
Okay, let's begin with the "frosting incident". I did not have the time nor the resources to make homemade frosting- thus me using store bought. I had two cans of white colored frosting, one with sprinkles and one without. I didn't want to mix the two, nor did I want to get different color pinks while adding the red food coloring. This was the first of many issues to follow.
So I frosted the top of one cake, placed the other cake on top of that, and frosted the very top. This was all with the non-sprinkled frosting. It came out quite beautiful and smooth (not seen here in the photo). Then I mixed the next frosting batch and began to do the sides. Not only was this much harder to spread (it just came from the fridge) it also kept shooting sprinkles all over the top, ruining the whole purpose of me separating the two batches.
And here's the best part... I have to leave for class in about 20 minutes and I want to finish this before I go. With the leftover pink frosting with sprinkles, I added some blue to make a pretty purple shade. I wanted to pipe this (with my new handy-dandy never-before-used piping bag) around the edges just for unnecessary cute-ness. Once I began squeezing, I realized it had a hard time coming out. Nevertheless, I continued squeezing and squeezing, making pretty circular motions, until my hands nearly fell off. I was about 3/4 done around the entire circle, and I was about 5 minutes away from leaving for class. I guess I squeezed a little too hard, and all the purple icing fell out of the bag and onto the top of the cake.
Frustrated, late, and covered in icing at this point, I was just stunned. I scraped as much purple off as I could, fixed the top, dabbed my finger in purple and just dotted the rest of the circle. I was just SO done with this freaking cake. Notice how I have no pictures of this part- mostly because I was rushing, but also because I was just so sick of it. The best part was I didn't even know if it tasted good so I didn't know if this was even worth it. Throwing the cake in the fridge, I scraped some frosting off my pants, and I sped to class.
Then we had the party that night. Me and our other roommate got some regular candles from my room, stuck them on top, and started singing happy birthday. While cutting the cake, I asked everyone to be blatantly honest about how the cake tasted. I mean, I do want to know how I can improve in my baking. Out of all ten or so people, I got no responses other than "very good" and "really moist". Apparently everyone liked it! Now, I don't know if they were all saying this because they were all wasted, or they actually meant it lol.
I had a slice as well, and as I did like it, I didn't think it was anything special. Maybe that's just my bias, because I really don't care for cake. This was how much was left at the end of the night, so I assume others liked it (or had the drunken-munchies). Notice here how the stupid purple frosting is visible. Ughh, waste of time.
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