I decided to make Tucker a truck birthday cake.
The process started yesterday when I made the cake (so it'd be cool enough to cut out and frost today). I decided I needed to double the recipe to make a 9x13 sheet cake (necessary for the design I was doing), while the recipe called for a bundt pan. I've never actually used a bundt pan, but I know they're in the shape of a doughnut. I had it in my mind that bundt pans are a) smaller than usual pans and b) cook faster because of their shape. It turns out both assumptions are wrong. How did I find this out? Well, it started because I doubled the recipe, so I'd have enough for my 9 x 13 pan. The doubled recipe seemed like a lot. It seemed like too much for the pan, possibly. I ignored my intuition and put the pan in the oven only to discover 4 minutes later that it had already risen enough it was about to overflow.
It was early enough in the process that I simply scooped out enough for a dozen cupcakes and put everything back in the oven. Surprisingly, this didn't seem to hurt the result too much. What DID hurt the result, however, was assuming that a sheet cake takes longer to bake than a bundt cake. It turns out this is not true. Thankfully, the cake I was making was naturally really moist so the extra 20+ minutes in the oven didn't really hurt things too much, unless you knew how good the cake should've been if done right.
Fast forward to today.
Tucker was napping and it was time to make his cake. All was going according to plan, until I made batch #2 of frosting. I am still puzzled about this, but somehow I managed to curdle my frosting. Keep in mind that I'm making vegan frosting due to Tucker's allergies... and keep in mind that batch #1 and #2 had identical ingredients. The big question: how is it possible to curdle frosting? It was just confectioner's sugar, vanilla, Tucker's "butter", rice milk and a little crisco (I know, gross, but the recipe said it would really help the frosting be decent).
Anyway, everything curdled. At first I pretended that it was just a little thing that maybe only I would notice, or that would go away if I smooshed it on the cake. Not so. The rice milk and food coloring basically remained liquid while everything else precipitated out. A quick trip to the store for more confectioner's sugar, and a helpful hint from my friend that marshmallow fluff might be a good thickener for vegan frosting, and the cake making process started seeming more hopeful again.
The only problem with learning these lessons is that there is NO way I'm going to remember these little details by the time I bake my next cake in 6 months or a year.
But, all in all, the cake turned out well and at least Tucker was impressed.
