Having Your Cake & Eating It, Too

Months ago I found out about Bakerella's web site

and I saw a picture of a delicious-looking yellow cake

and I had a goal to make that cake.

Of all the desserts to be had

I have to say that cake is my least favorite,

unless it is a Texas Sheet Cake,

which I will make easily.

In fact, just talking about it gives me the urge

to make it today.

So I might do that.

But back to Bakerella's cake.

It isn't so much that I don't like cake

as that I rarely eat a cake that tastes good.

I want to like cake,

it is just hard to find a good cake.

Bakerella's recipe gave me hope.

This recipe gave me fluttery feelings of

baking anticipation.

I was sure this-would-be-the-one.

However, it took awhile for me to assemble everything I needed.

Like whole milk.

We don't do whole milk.

And butter flavoring.

I didn't know about that.

And then I needed to get 3 pans of the same size.

All these things took time

because I don't live in a place where I can just

run to the right store and get these things.

In fact, I couldn't even find the

White Lily self-rising flour in the

Land of Many Stores.

So I used cake flour and luckily

found out I needed to add the baking powder.

I followed that recipe exactly to the letter.

Except for the White Lily self-rising cake flour.

I think that actually makes a difference.

And perhaps our high altitude

(close to 6000 ft)

which I didn't do anything about.

So the cake kind of sunk in the middle.

All three layers.

I solved that problem by glopping the frosting into each indentation

to sort of even things out.

It was too much frosting.

You can see the middle frosting glops

from this view point.

And I also put cocoa into the frosting recipe

because this was Jake's birthday cake

and he loves chocolate.

The frosting was good.

Very chocolate-y.

So while the cake looked good

(Nick didn't know I had made it-he said it looked like a robot made it)

I still can't say whether or not it really IS good.

I need to get the energy to try it one more time

but with the White Lily self-rising flour.

It is just so much work.

It needs to be REALLY good

to justify the work.

If anyone has more success with this than I,

please let me know.

Or if you have a really good cake recipe

please let me know that, too.

And one more thought:

I recorded the Brian Williams program last night about the White House and Obama, etc. and I watched that this morning. Rarely, and I mean Rarely, do I watch real time tv. I even record The Amazing Race when it is on so that I can skip through the commercials. Somehow I saw a commercial today that made me laugh out loud. It is for a movie coming out in August inspired by Julia Child and a woman who has a blog, two real stories. Meryl Streep plays Julia Child and just in the commercial she was hilarious. Finally, a movie I just may go to the theatre to see. All my talk here about cooking and baking made me think about that commercial. I really enjoyed it. I think the movie is Julie & Julia. There you go. A baking review and a move commercial review all in one.