Adventures in Baking (Or, "My Failed Attempt at Domesticity")

I laugh at myself a lot.

Particularly yesterday.

See, I have some friends. Some wonderful friends whom I adore and admire. I attempted to imitate one of them.

This particular friend (We'll call her "Ivy") often takes it into her head to bake something from scratch for no particular reason. Sometimes it's just to do something nice for her husband (whom rumor has it adores dessert,) and sometimes it's just because she feels like it.

About a week ago, I had the pleasure of partaking in one of her delectable chocolate cupcakes, made from scratch from Ghiradelli cocoa. (It was divine. Heaven in a cupcake.) I also stood and watched her make icing from scratch. Perfection. Pure, unadulterated, perfection.

I love this friend so much I decided once again to copy her. (Ivy hon, I'm sorry. I just can't help it! You are my role model.)

I baked a cake.

I have not baked a cake in years. I'm the one who goes to the grocery store bakery and buys a cake there, and then only for special occasions.

While perusing my pantry for items needed to make dinner, I found a boxed cake mix. I have no idea why it was in there. (They must have been two for one or something like that. Hubby made a cake awhile back, so maybe that's where it came from.) So I decided that I would bake a cake. Just because I felt like it.

Mistake #1: Using the wrong bakeware.

I have a Pampered Chef stoneware baking dish. It's fantastic and I use it for all sorts of things. Lasagna, chicken, casseroles, pretty much for anything one would use a standard sized baking dish. When I attempted to remove the cake from the pan and place it on a wire rack, it made a big, gigantic mess. The stoneware is very porous, so even though I used cooking spray, the cake stuck. I tried to unstick it from the sides using a knife and that served to loosen it just enough for half of the cake to come tumbling out of the pan. I then proceeded to use a spatula to loosen the other half of the cake from the pan. It came out in crumbled bits.

(At least the crumbled bits of cake still tasted great!)

Mistake #2: Trying to make icing from scratch.

I phoned my dear friend Ivy and asked her to tell me how to make icing. She told me, I followed her directions precisely, and I ended up with a gooey, lumpy, drippy, mess.

(At least the gooey, lumpy, drippy mess still tasted great!)

I do not blame Ivy for this. I must have skipped an important step, or set the mixer to the wrong speed, or added the ingredients in the wrong order. (So maybe I didn't follow her directions precisely...) Or Perhaps Ivy assumed I knew a thing or two about baking, so she left out something obvious that anyone else who had ever baked a cake in their lives would know. (Have you ever played that game where you tell someone how to make a peanut butter sandwich? You say, "put the peanut butter on the bread" and the person picks up the jar of peanut butter, and sets the jar down on the whole loaf of bread? I need specifics here.) Again Ivy, not your fault, babe.

A few moments ago, I trashed the cake. I should have photographed it for you all to gawk and point fingers at, but I'm not quite that willing to undergo that kind of humiliation. You'll just have to use your imaginations.

Lessons learned?

Use a plain old baking dish.

Buy a tub of store-bought icing.

Or, just go to the grocery store bakery and buy a cake.