Happy Birthday Melissa!

I'm getting so popular for my cake baking abilities, I get last minute calls for cake requests ;) Baby chister Hortence, aka Molly, called late in the week asking me to make her BFF's birthday cake for her party on Sunday. I was thrilled to accept the task, although also a little nervous because Melissa is a trained chef. She taught me how to carve a turkey last Thanksgiving.. so she's got to know I'm a total amateur in the kitchen!!

Molly told me Melissa's favorite flavor is chocolate.. I love girls who love chocolate. They know what time it is. Fortunable I have a fabulous chocolate cake recipe (see Mike's Birthday post), and since Melissa isn't Brad, I could use one of my more exciting chocolate frosting recipes. I peeked at her facebook event and noticed 17 people rsvp'd to her party... whoah oh oh no! Molly mentioned she would also have a Cold Stone Cake that evening, but since I am paranoid, I decided to make a tiered cake , 8" and 6". The bottom tier was three layered chocolate with chocolate swiss meringue buttercream (I'll explain how I ended up with three layers in a minute). The top tier was two layered chocolate cake with strawberry swiss meringue buttercream and fresh strawberries sandwiched with buttercream in the middle for filling.

Now last time we talked about my chocolate cake, we discussed tumors and sinkholes. This time around I regained my patience and let my buttermilk actually get to room temp, opted to use regular flour, and instead of using all dutch process cocoa powder, I substituted about 1/3 regular cocoa powder. The tumors threatened me half way through the baking process, but to my surprise, they totally disappeared by the end. As I pulled the cakes out of the oven, it became evident that the bottom 8" tier was going to be way too tall in proportion to the top. So I cut each layer in half and set one half-layer to the side for Brad and frosted it with some rainbow chip frosting I had on hand. Somehow, he managed to be totally surprised I made the cake/"bread" from scratch.. ha!

This is the first time I've paid attention to the amount of time it took me to make a cake. Usually I'm alone, but this time Brad was hanging out in the other room and chatting. When I finished, Brad exclaimed at how nice the cake looked and awed at all the time it took to make it.. and emphasized that because of this, he hoped the birthday girl appreciated it. I thought he was just being funny, then I realized: I started the cake at 10 p.m. and finished at 2 a.m. It seemed like it took a couple of hours, not 4!! Now I understand why people charge so much for cakes!! I couldn't survive on $20 a cake... two a day, 5 days a week.. that comes to a salary of about $10,000 before taxes and supplies. HAHAHAHA!!!

Proud Baker:

Happy Cake:

(topped with sparkling candle)