It's Nuthin' 3 lbs of Icing Can't Fix. . .

::hee::

Sure. . .it looks good NOW.

You should've seen it BEFORE I slapped 8 cups of icing on it.

Oh Tadpoles.

Saturday was a big day. Very special.  Special enough that we had family coming over for dinner to help us celebrate before we went to Easter Vigil Mass and our wedding.

We ran errands, cleaned up, cooked and as you can see. . .baked. 

Sometimes I wonder what I am thinking when I decide something like making our wedding cake is a good idea.  In my defense we  didn't want to spend the money on a cake to feed such a small group of people and I had all the ingredients. Sounds plausible, right?

Nowhere in my thinking do I remember that I am, in fact, easily fatigued and on a new round of medications. Nor does my family lovingly point it out. Oh no, they just let me ramble on about how great it's going to be and I can do IT ALL! ::grinning::

Silly woman. 

Still, it gave us a great laugh. And quite the sugar high I will admit.

See, what happened was, I followed the directions exactly.  Yeah, I know. My mistake. I actually greased the correct pans the way they were supposed to be and well. . . both layers stuck. And stuck good.  I turned the first one over onto the cake stand and only half of it fell out of the pan. No bother. I was filling the cake with raspberry preserves anyway.  I spread 1 1/2 cups of preserves onto that trainwreck and after thoroughly loosening the top layer I flipped it onto my outstretched hand to gently lay it on top of the preserves. Except that layer did the same thing and only half the cake crumbled out of the pan. Whatever. I slapped that one on top of the preserves and set the whole mess on the dining room table, trailing crumbs everywhere.  Then Pooldad and I ate the cake remains out of both pans and were happy. ::grinning::

Writing this out I am suddenly sad I did not take pictures of the whole debacle. It was pretty funny.

While I was in the kitchen whipping up the icing spackle for the cake Squirrel came bounding down the stairs into the dining room. She later told me she took one look at the cake, heard me mixing something up in the kitchen and quietly retreated back upstairs, thinking I was probably ready to step off the back deck. ::giggle::

Nah.  I knew everyone that was invited loves us, and they weren't coming to celebrate by eating the stupid cake. They were coming for something much better. Cake is just. . .well, icing on the day. I couldn't get worked up on whether that cake came out. Besides there were Easter cakes on sale everywhere, so it wasn't like I couldn't just go buy one. [Side note: Am I the only one that is creeped out by the plastic Easter Bunny faces the grocery stores put on their bunny cakes?  I avert my eyes and dash through the bakery section of our local grocer during this holiday because those cakes scare me. I do.]

My cake. I don't mind if things don't turn out. Never have, but there is one thing I hate about failure when baking. I hate to waste ingredients. They can be expensive. This cake happened to cost $4.50 [mere pennies!] to make, but still. It's the principle, the challenge of the thing that was making me want to turn that cake into a success.

I did what any [almost] sane woman, with a stand mixer and no history of diabetes amongst the family, would do.  I made a buttload of white icing.  8 cups or 3 lbs to be exact.  I managed to use every last drop of it because that cake needed some serious rehab.  Not only were there crumbs everywhere and half of it was still stuck in the pans, the whole top was cracked in two. [Yes, yes I did let it cool before I put it on the preserves. I am not new to this particular rodeo. ::smiling::]

The recipe for the frosting is as follows:  2 cups of vegetable shortening, 8 cups of powdered sugar, 2 teaspoons of clear vanilla extract and a few tablespoons of water.

Yeah, I know.  It took me two days to come off the sugar high from taste testing the stuff.

And I almost killed my stand mixer in the process. Wow. That is a lot of sugary goodness gang. But Betsy the Beater hung on and produced the lightest, fluffliest icing that did the trick in forming that cake into the beauty you see above.

Bonus? It actually tastes delicious.  I was surprised no one scraped off the 1/2 - 1 inch of frosting between bites. They didn't leave any on their plates or feed the dog either. I think it is because the white cake and preserves weren't overly sweet so it worked well together.

This is all that is left.  

One lonely slice. 

 

 

Pooldad is home, so I gotta' mosey. Have a great week!

See ya on the flipside Tadpoles.  Love, Skippy