Month: October 2009

That will not be the title of the next hit show on the Food Network.

Jenny and I have a little running commentary regarding our beliefs on cake-baking. She believes she should slave over bake her kids’ birthday cakes herself (you may have heard her mention her neurosis and its accompanying anxiety attacks here or here, or perhaps here, here or here). I believe that my kids should have beautiful birthday cakes, so I do what any rational person would do and call the local bakery.

And here’s why.

Saturday I was looking for an afternoon activity to do with the kids, so I decided we should run over to Target and get a Halloween cake mix and icing (as well as the various and sundry other things that always wind up in my cart there), and use this lovely cake pan to make a pumpkin-shaped cake.

I’ve had this cake pan for a while, but I’d never used it. The package showed pictures of cakes decorated like basketballs, baseballs, tennis balls and the like, and I thought it might come in handy someday. And it was on sale. So anyway, I could just picture the lovely pumpkin Kate and I would make.

Except I accidentally threw away the directions for using the pan, and they are not to be found anywhere on the internet. So I wasn’t sure whether or not to grease the pan (I guessed no, and I guessed wrong), how full to fill each cup (less full than I did), or how long and at what temperature to bake it (350 for like six hours).

So when we eventually pulled it out of the oven, I detected a problem when I tried to get the first section out of the pan. It was, uh, slightly stuck, and about 1/3 of it remained in the pan (see above re: greasing the pan).

Crap.

I soldiered on and took out the rest of the sections, having only marginally better success than with the first, and when I arranged it in a circular shape… well, it was a disaster.

But a little icing can fix anything, right?

Yeah, not so much.

I iced it… and here’s what it looked like (I only wish I was the experienced food photographer that Erin is, because really these pictures just don’t do the cake justice. They make it look better than it did in real life. I’m serious.)

Then Kate put (waaaaaay too many) sprinkles on… Behold our masterpiece.

It was so unappealing that we had no interest in eating it. Cake usually does not stand a chance around our house, but this one sits on the kitchen counter, untouched.

That, my friends, is why I will never, ever make my kids’ birthday cakes.