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3/14/2013

Piece of Cake!

What's a girl's weekend without a little dessert?  Answer: crappy.  Well, lucky for us we happened to be celebrating my friend's recent birthday, which means one thing...birthday cake!  Just a day before we headed to Hocking Hills my darling HLP turned 29!  So we naturally celebrated with a gifts, balloons and a big cake.  When Amanda and I were roommates in college, I would usually pick up a box of yellow cake and a tub of chocolate frosting from the store and assemble it into an oh-so-classy sheet cake for her.  We were lazy college students, what do you expect?  I don't even think we did candles or anything to decorate it...I just "made" the cake and then we ate it!  And it usually didn't last long. 

This year I wanted to do something a bit more special, so I decided I was going to make a cake from scratch! As much as I like to bake I've never actually made a cake or frosting from scratch, so I was really looking forward to it.  I did some research and found a cake recipe and a chocolate frosting recipe (one my sister, who is allergic to cocoa butter, could have) with pretty good reviews and then I just jumped right in...


It's not the prettiest cake in the world, but I think it's not half bad for my first real cake.  I think it tasted pretty good too!  I was worried that the cake would be dry, but it wasn't.  (FYI, I took a suggestion from one reviewer and immediately put the cakes in the freezer from the oven to halt the cooking process.)  It ended up having a great rich, buttery flavor to it, probably from all the egg yolks.  And the frosting was also pretty rich and chocolatey, though in hindsight, I wish I would have thinned it out a bit more since it didn't spread on very well.  As for the lettering: I, unfortunately, couldn't find my piping bag for the life of me so I had to do the lettering with a ziploc bag.  Oh well, it'll do. 

Now I can't wait for the next birthday to come up so I can find another cake to make from scratch.  I've already pinned a couple sound delicious...

[sources (left to right): strawberry dream cake, lemon blueberry cake, strawberry + chocolate cake, & Billie's Italian cream cake (not the prettiest, but it sounds amazing)]

Stay tuned tomorrow for some highlights of hiking/walking in Hocking Hills.

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks, Hena! It tasted pretty good too. Thanks for checking out my blog, I really appreciate it!

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