cake

Yesterday was Gumby's birthday. I took it upon myself to bake half a cake. I mean, how difficult can it be? I found a recipe that I can halve and it went okay. However, I don't have half of a 9x13 pan. I have a loaf pan. The cake didn't rise much and I do believe it got overcooked. Undaunted, I cut it in half: it will be a two-layer cake.

Then came the frosting. I could not believe how unhealthy the frosting is: loaded with butter and sugar. I couldn't find the sticks of butter I though I had; they must have expired and gotten thrown out. I didn't want to use shortening (Crisco). So I opted for a recipe that used only egg, sugar, and corn syrup. I don't know why we have corn syrup, but we do. I don't have a double boiler, so I used a smaller pot that I put into a larger pot. Our mixer is a hand-held one, so it worked okay. After more the seven minutes of beating that the recipe estimated, I still did not have stiff peaks. Worried, I put in a little cream of tartar. The last step was to add the vanilla extract. Oops, I spilled the extract into the frosting; no telling how much is in there. Oh well, mix it up anyways.

Then I piled it onto the "cake." Fortunately it did stick to the cake and not run. It wasn't pretty. After I finished frosting, I tasted the frosting. It was like marshmallow. I set the cake aside and started the clean up (lots of clean up when you're baking). To add to the comedy, during the clean up, I knocked over a tray that had small packets of condiments and a bulb of garlic. The garlic bulb fell onto a side of the cake.  I picked the garlic out and patched up the icing, but there's a chance some of the garlic papery shell is still there.

Gumby was game and tasted the cake. Gumby was okay with it, and liked the "fun" marshmallowy icing. Cake is almost gone (it was half a cake).