One person in the house had a birthday recently, and a cake was called for! On account of it being an introvert's birthday party, the celebration consisted of a nonchalant group text that there was cake on the counter, there would be no singing, and small fires could be lit as desired. As we had previously stated that the Wacky Cake tasted like it was from someone's birthday, it was the natural choice. Also, we have a stack of these tiny pans, so we could make a small but still layered birthday cake.
Because we wanted to actually do a layer cake, we made one big revision to the recipe: we got out a mixing bowl. It may seem like we just got rid of the one reason to make a wacky cake, but really it means it tastes so good you can mix it in anything.
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| Once again, we tried to give each liquid its own hole, but the melted oleo spilled over. |
You may think that we have turned the wacky cake into a wack-free one, but this was the day we found out that the cookie sheet we put the flimsy foil pans on was as warped as a potato chip. This caused some unfortunate cake tilt.
If we zoom in a bit, we can see that the cakes got downright crispy on one corner.
I tried to stack them in opposite directions hoping they would level out on top, but anyone who has tried this knows it never really works.
We wanted to know if the cake would actually let go of the pan if you mixed it in a separate bowl and then greased the pan first. It does. But it will then want to spangle any icing you put on top with unprofessional crumbs.
As a lot of people know, one can easily avoid crumbs in your cake icing (or at least reduce them) by simply freezing your cake before bringing out your icing and spatula. However, our freezer does not have that kind of vacant space. Therefore, the unimpeded cake crumbs ruined my perfect icing aesthetics.
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| My professional reputation is ruined! |
Thinking of those fancy red velvet cakes where they cover the iced sides with more cake crumbs, I tried pushing the icing around with the spatula to raise so many cake crumbs into it that it would surely look deliberate. It definitely looks like an attempt was made.
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| I should have just used sprinkles. |
But all was well when we cut the cake. It was absolutely delicious. And the birthday wacky cake had the wackiest of uneven cake layers which looked really neat (and name-appropriate) when we cut it.
My grandma didn't have room to freeze wedding cakes before decorating. She put a thin crumb coat of frosting on the cakes, let it dry, then put a thicker layer over it. That said, I remember buttering my hands and putting them on my sister's iced cake while she turned it to smooth out the crumb filled frosting. We learned about the crumb coat icing after that bit of fun. Oh the things we did in 4-H :)
ReplyDeleteWe'll have to try that next time, even if it means we need the patience to let the first coating dry a bit.
DeleteYour 4-H club sounds like a real experience. I love hearing about it.
One year I thought the sprinkle container had a sprinkle top, but it did not, so I ended up dumping most of a jar of sprinkles on the cake. That will cover up a lot of problems too! (Luckily, that was NOT for the cake decorating project.)
DeleteHa! I forget about that one. Lots of sprinkles do cover up a lot, and they can add a nice crunch to your cake. 4-H was a blast. A bunch of kids trying to learn skills that they will use as an adult with mixed levels of success. It taught us early on to improvise and move on.
DeleteI'm so glad I could share a recipe worth keeping!
ReplyDeleteThis cake is also really good with strawberry or raspberry jam!
We will definitely be doing that the next time we make it.
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