Piece of Cake!!

Its my stepson's birthday. My original thought was to make a cookie. You know, the big cookie in the pizza pan. I had planned it in my mind until I had done a little blog surfing. I love doing that!! So I took a sharp right and made a cake. Not just any other cake, but this....

So I will start from the beginning. Some basic cake chat. My mom has been making cakes since I was knee high to a grasshopper so I have learned a few things along the way. Never did aquire her artistic abilities, hence the above cake. She has done some pretty great cakes. This was made using a box mix. Dont tell anyone! Shhhh!! The directions can be a bit misleading. First it says to beat the batter for 2 minutes. Take a little more time and add a little more love to it by beating the batter for an additional few minutes. I promise .... this is the one time where beating more is good! Be sure to prepare your pans for the batter. The box mix I had said you could either use vegetable spray or grease and flour.

**Notice the paper towel behind the pan? That will go around the exterior of the pan prior to going into the oven.

 Well....here is the outcome...

The cake on the left the pan was preped using vegetable spray. Notice out it fell apart! Never again will I go that route. The one on the right the pan was prepped using the conventional method of greasing the pan and flouring. If you are using a box mix, use some of the dry mix instead of the flour to avoid white powder look. It works.

Prior to putting the pan (with cake mixture in prepared pan) pull out a bunch of paper towels.

Get them wet - well some where between damp and wet. This gets folded and wrapped around your cake pan. See how it looks like it has been folded? It was. Wrap it around the exterior of your cake pan prior to being put into the oven. This will ensure that your cake will bake evenly. Your cake wont turn out with a huge dome looking like the dome at Notre Dame.

See ... no dome! The one on the left is a perfect example. That was right out of the pan. I only make cakes like - uhhhhh a couple times a year if that. If you are like me and cant cut a straight line here is a tip that may help you in the event you do get a dome. I placed the frozen cake back into the pan and trimmed it so it was flat. Frozen?? Keeping reading and you will see why.

Bake cake according to the directions in regards to oven tempature and time. Once the cake is done baking, it goes directly into the freezer. Yes! Freezer!! Why? You will have the most moist cake and people will be asking you how you made the cake. It works. Honestly does. A bonus to this freezer technique is that you can make your cake a few days or week in advance.

While my cakes were thawing I made frosting. I always buy the store stuff. I buy two different flavors, mix them together and add flavoring. I had a friend practically beg me to tell her my recipe. This recipe I had come across while blog hopping. I tweeked it a bit to make it my own though.

Once your frosting is ready begin putting it on the cake. MMMmmmm - oh that taste good. Love some frosting! Oh you know when I said my mom made cakes when I was a kid? She made her own frosting. I would always go out to the kitchen with my finger prepped to get some of it. One time I did. It wasnt pretty. part of her frosting recipe was using Crisco. I primed my finger, dipped it in there, stuck it in the my mouth .... EWWWW! It wasnt frosting at all. It was the grease. Boy was I disappointed. I think I was suppose to learn something.

So now your cake is all frosted and should look something like this...

I did add a crumb coat to it earlier. Crumb coat is a thin coat of icing on the cake to seal the crumbs from the final coat of icing. Here though, I dont care how messy the final coat is. Notice my gear? Kit kats and reece's ready to apply. Here we gooooo..

Hmmm...see a problem? One of the cakes turned out too high from baking. Tsk tsk. I see an opportunity.

I stacked the reeces peices over the kit kats to make it appear that there is a TON gazillion of them.

Oh give me a break! I ran out of kit kats? Really? I had gotten to king size bars for this and thought it would be enough. By the way, this is a 6" cake if you need referrence. So another trip to the drug store and we got two regular size bars of kit kats for me to finish this bad boy off.

 Here is the final version .. mmmmm that frosting is soooo

And I added an "E" on top for the birthday boy's name. See it? Mmmmm...

Thank you to Texas Monkey for the idea. Check out their link for more ideas like this http://texasmonkey.blogspot.com/

Now, go eat your cake!