ILP: BIRTHDAY CAKE

This last Tuesday, my roommate turned 22!  For her birthday, I decided that I would try my hand at creating a cake.  While I have baked several plain old cakes throughout my lifetime, this one was going to be different.  My plan was to create a two-tiered white cake with a middle layer of frosting, white frosting all around the outside, and then drizzled melted butterscotch down the sides.  My inspiration came from the video at the bottom of the page.

As it turns out, making a cake that looks as beautiful and flawless as that one is not as simple as the girl in the video makes it look.  Nevertheless, I am fairly happy with this first attempt at a “fancy” cake.

I began by mixing up the cake batter and then poured it into two 8″ circular cake pans.  Then, they were sent into the oven to bake until they were a perfect golden brown on the top.  Once the cakes were ready, I took them out and placed them on hot pads on the counter to cool.  This process seemed like it took forever as I was anxious to get going with my frosting!  Finally, the cakes had cooled and it was time to remove them from their pans.  Here, I had my first moment of temporary struggle with this baking project.  Even though the pans were coated with non-stick spray, the cakes were stubborn to come out.  After a little bit of wiggling, both round cakes were out with most of their pieces.  My next step was to frost the top of the bottom layer and place the other on top.  This went fairly smoothly.  After both layers were secured, I coated the top and all sides of the cake with the remaining frosting.  To do this, I used a regular butter knife (although I have been looking into getting a more cake specific tool to help me with this task).

Up until this point, things were going just about as well as I had expected. Instead of the chocolate drizzle shown in the video, I decided to attempt using melted butterscotch chips.  Since I did not have a squeeze bottle like the one used in the video, I figured the easiest way to do this would be to put it in a bag and pipe it through a small round tip.  When I went to begin drizzling the butterscotch around the edges of the cake, the butterscotch began to harden and did not go on the way I had hoped.  At this point, I decided to forego the drizzle entirely and instead, piped with a small star shaped tip all the way around the top.

To add the final touches to the cake, I used the remaining butterscotch to write the words “Happy Birthday” on the top and placed halved mini Reese’s cups along the bottom as well as some chocolate chip cookie dough rolled into balls.  Even though this first cake did not turn out exactly as planned, it was delicious and made for a wonderful birthday celebration for my roommate and our friends!