blog #092 >> Pink frosting fixes everything...

...except my cake.

Yesterday, was Cooking Disaster Day. It's not that I'm a bad cook... I like to cook and I think I'm pretty good at it too. I was even in cooking 4H when I was a kid. I've baked chocolate lava cakes with molten chocolate insides. I've made chocolate frosting that needed to be stirred every five minutes for two hours while being refrigerated at a certain temperature. I bake pineapple upside-down cakes left and right. I've baked yellow-chocolate marble cakes, sour cream cakes, pudding cakes, coffee cakes, jello cakes, boxed cakes, cakes from scratch, layered cakes, ice cream cakes and cup cakes.
But yesterday I was simply cursed.

I woke up yesterday morning with only one thing in mind. CHOCOLATE! Who knows why, but it was really all I wanted to eat. So I went to the cupboard and resisted the temptation to eat only chocolate for breakfast and had some toast with Nutella, and milk... I almost made chocolate milk too, but I manged to put the mix back in the cupboard. And there in the back was a lonely box of chocolate cake mix. Ah, there it was. What I really wanted for breakfast. But I was in a hurry to leave for work. So I left it on the counter, planning to start it when I got home.

As soon as I got home, I took my coat off and got to work. Preheated the oven checked my ingredients, got out the pans, turned on some music, (because you can't cook without music) and my cake was on it's way. Well, I open the package and pour in the water and oil and go to get the eggs. And the eggs were dated April 20th. Now I know I don't use eggs very often, but a whole month out dated! After I gave it some thought I remembered my mom loaning me some eggs and refilling the old container. But they're still probably pretty old eggs. So, since I had already started adding the ingredients, I decided to go up to the store and buy more eggs and some other groceries I needed.

One hour later, I get home put my groceries away and resume cake baking. I add the eggs and... the oil? I don't remember. Did I add it already? I'll add it again. So, I mix it all up and pour it in the pan and reheat the oven. And as I'm cleaning up I realize... Oh, shoot! There's only two eggs shells, and it needed three eggs! Well, too late now they're in the oven.

Next, I start the frosting. I fortunately had some frosting start from Trina. She had made some too thin and too pink, gave it to me and I kept it in my freezer for later. I got it out defrosted it and added some more powdered sugar. And then I got it just the right consistency. Well, I leave it on the counter, and eat dinner, which was also a disaster but another story. And then I played the accordion for awhile. After the cakes where done... rather flat but done, I pulled them from the oven and let them cool for a bit. (They also cracked when I put them on the wire rack.) And after they had cooled for a half hour, the frosting began. Perhaps I didn't let my cakes cool enough, or perhaps the frosting defrosted a little more than expected. But either way my cake fell. All the icing just sort of melted away. Finally, it toppled over creating the disaster pictured above.

Now actually, I'm sure it will be fine... in the end. I mean, it still tastes like chocolate. And isn't that what it's all about. Really it's a quite comical cake. I couldn't have made it look any worse had I tried. And tonight, when I get home from work. I get to eat chocolate cake with milk, which is exactly what I need.

T