Molly's Birfdai

This has been an extremely busy week. Work has killed, and I've had a commitment right after work each day. This isn't the kind of week I'd normally plan to bake anything, but it happens to be my baby sister's birthday party tonight and I wanted to make her something special: a cake. Duh!

I began Wednesday with the buttercream and filling: both raspberry. Everything went really well and as planned. Although, I think going forward I'll have a new strategy for adding raspberry to the buttercream. What I do now is puree raspberries, strain out any large chunks of seed, then add it to the buttercream. It works well but some small bits of seed get into the buttercream, and although it's not even really noticeable, it is enough to bother me. So I was thinking.. the filling I make is really runny when it is hot. I could strain some of it and set it aside to add to my buttercream. I'd get the punchy raspberry flavor, plus a tiny hint of lemon and a little bit of sugar. Sounds great to me!

Last night I made the cake: 8" white and 6" chocolate, extra batter going toward cupcakes that will be served at the bar for her drunkie friends (including me). Nothing exciting to report on the cake baking, except that I am 99% certain the sink hole dilemma in the chocolate cake is directly related to using dutch process cocoa powder rather than regular.

I had a friend over while I baked, which was tons of fun, but not very efficient. We kept getting wrapped up in fun conversation and I'd ignore the dishes and then forgot to take out my buttercream to let it get to room temp. So when it came time to frost, I had to put the frosting in the microwave in short increments to bring it to spreadable consistency. Not my favorite plan. I also had trouble halving the white layers and trimming the top, so it was rounder than I wanted, which made frosting more complicated. I put the chocolate cake on top before giving it a crumb coat (dumby) so chocolate crumbs fell into the frosting on the 8". By this time the buttercream was runny and not easy to work with, but it was late and I didn't want to fuss with it. So I decorated it anyway, and it didn't come out very pretty.

To personalize the cake, I melted some dark chocolate and piped it on to some parchment paper. Then I put it in the freezer to set (lazy) and topped the cake. It came out pretty good.

Lesson learned: I've decided I have a humongo long way to go when it comes to decorating a cake. I'm just plain not good at it and I don't have a steady hand. Thank your lucky stars I'm not a surgeon! I should have known this, though. I learned I wasn't good at 3d art in high school.. my sculptures always looked demented. I'm worried this means I need a new hobby. I hate being bad at things!! I guess as long as it tastes good I'm halfway there..

M 24!: