Happy Birthday Baby: The Tale of the Cake Explosion

For my niece’s third birthday I volunteered to bake her cake. My cousin requested that I make two cakes, a large one for everyone to eat and a small one for K-Lynn (name shortened to protect the cute and adorable). Easy task? I sure thought so. My kitchen looked like a pastel bomb exploded, and I was covered in mad amounts of frosting when all was said and done. My cousin and her fiancé were thrilled and impress, but the perfectionist in me died a little working in it.

The cake itself was simple. My cousin asked for white cake, and I decided to jazz it up with some color. The original plan was pink and purple cake with a light blue frosting and pink trim, but when the cake didn’t turn out very purple, I let it stay more blue and went with purple frosting. Using two boxes of Duncan Hines White Cake mix, prepared as directed, I dyed one half pink and one half a light purple/blue. I marbled the cake batter and made two 9 in layers, and one 6 in cake (to be the birthday girl’s special cake).

Next came what I am calling the Great Cake Explosion, although really it should probably be known has the Great Frosting Explosion. Armed with disposable pastry bags, my decorating tips, and two couplers, I embarked on my first ever attempt at cake decorating. I really need more tools because honestly this was huge mess that took hours to clean up later. Ok, so hours is an exaggeration but it really was a huge mess. Using three cans of Duncan Hines Creamy Vanilla Frosting, I dyed some of purple, thinned it with a little milk, and used it to ice both cakes. I really need an actual angled spatula, but it didn’t turn out too bad for a first try, Next I dyed some of the frosting pink and attempt to pipe shells around the bottoms of both cakes and stars around the top edges of both cakes. I discovered later that I should have used twist ties to hold the tops of the bags shut and that my icing was beginning to thin. I ran short of pink half way through K-Lynn’s cake and had to add purple to the bag. The problem was that while I got a really cool tie-dye effect my icing was too thin and some of it ran.

Lessons learned:

• Angled Spatulas are a must for icing cakes.
• Always make sure to tie the pastry bags closed properly so that you can hold them.
• Mixing thinned icing with stiffer icing will cause your trim to run.
• I really need more tools—decorating tips, pastry bags, silicone spatulas, twist ties
• Making your own buttercream icing is the wise move.