Domestic Goddess in Training - a tale of three cakes - the cake that fell

 Sad cake.

Sad, sad cake.

No photo of sad cake.  Too upset.

Firstly the electric whisk died just as I  started to cream the butter and sugar together.  I had to finish it by hand.  With a wooden spoon.  Hard work.

Then I burnt my thumb taking the cake out of the oven.

So I dropped it on the floor.  The cake, not my thumb.  That was in my mouth.

The top sank.  Considerably.

After putting ice and lavender oil  on my thumb (ice for pain, lavender to stop blister appearing - it works) I prepared the  butter cream icing.  Too much cream cheese fell into the mixture (which I had to cream by hand, with a wooden spoon as the whisk was still dead) so I had to add more icing sugar and butter.  And more -  until it tasted better.

Then I carefully cut the cake in half.

But not carefully enough as I still ended up with  quite a huge hole in the top layer, where it had sunk.  Spatial awareness nil points.  Slicing skills minus nil points.

At this point a resourceful person would have filled the cake, hole and all, with lashings of cream, fresh fruit and a sparkly candle.

Not me.

This is what I did.

I cut a bit out of the middle of the bottom layer and put it on the top. To fill the hole.  I then filled the hole in the bottom with masses of butter cream (I now had masses because of the extra cream cheese, icing and butter).  Because the top now had soft(ish) cake on it instead of the crispy cake top bit, when I butter creamed it the cake sort of started to disintegrate into the butter cream and there were cake crumbs on the top and all round the sides.  Messy.

Then I iced it.  And again stuck little melon baller discs on it.  In pink.  Pink food colouring painted on with a pastry brush.  Sigh.

The cake needed to be transported. 

So I turned the cake tin upside down.  Put butter cream on the inside of the lid which was now the base.  Put the cake onto the butter cream.  Put what was formerly the big bottom bit  of tin on top and sellotaped both together.  Safely anchored I put it  into my eco-friendly cloth bag ready for transportation.

The cakes journey.  Twenty minute walk to bus station, crossing two main roads and three minor ones and via a subway.  Five minute bus ride to Station Road.  Five minute walk to rail station.  Twenty minute train journey.  Five minute walk to bus stop.  Ten minute wait for bus in very warm sunshine.  Twenty minute bus ride. Ten minute walk to my parents house.

The cake did not survive this journey intact.

Despite my best efforts to keep it upright it had slid off it's butter cream base and was squashed against the side of the tin.  It was now a semi-circle.  Some of the pink discs had moved - quite a way in fact - leaving a trail of pink food colouring behind them - like a snail.

And my Mum loved her small tier red velvet birthday cake.  She ate it - even though I thought it was a bit stodgy (probably because it wasn't mixed enough!).  She said it tasted lovely.  My Dad had a slice (minus icing), I had a slice, my nephew had a slice and my Mum ate the rest.  It took her a week.  She said she really enjoyed it.

My Mum. xxxxxxoxxxxxxxx