I'm More Like Picasso Than Van Gogh

I will be the first to admit I am not very good at drawing, but I am a pretty good baker.  What's that you say? Those two things have nothing to do with each other? Um, pishaaaaa, they so do when it comes to making a cake. Lucky for me, I am a pro at decorating cupcakes.  So when I was asked to make a cake for my mom's birthday, I knew I could handle the challenge.


Right away I knew exactly what design I wanted to do on the cake.  My mom always plays Super Mario Bros with my sisters and me, and every time we play, she is the yellow mushroom head.

I just KNEW this is what I wanted to put on her cake.  I mean, how hard could it be if I just did the head? I did an analysis, and came up with "not hard" so I decided that would be it.  Since she doesn't like chocolate cake, I decided to use regular vanilla cake mix.  I stole two boxes from my parent's house (that's normal right? Make her cake with cake mix you stole?) and headed home to make the cake.  Since the two boxes were different, I had to bake them separately.  Can't go mixing different recipes together.  The first one came out fine, so I put it in the pan and baked it.  When my timer went off, I opened the oven to find a semi-burnt cake.  Oopsies, made a poopsies.  Guess I either put it in too long or had it too close to the top of the oven.  Note to self, put the next one in shorter.

On to layer two.  I looked at the back of the box, it took the same eggs and the same water as the first one. So naturally, they took the same oil.  So I mixed all the ingredients together then noticed the box said 1/3 instead of 1/2 a cup of oil.  UGH! How did I not see this before?  Didn't the box know it was supposed to use VERY large font when I am baking, considering I don't like to pay attention and just assume things?  So I looked around my kitchen for a syringe, but alas there was none.  I was thinking that I could somehow remove some of the oil from the mix, and that would fix the cake.  Well, after I realized that wasn't happening, I just decided to mix the cake.  I mean...there can't possibly be THAT much of a difference between a half cup and a third of a cup.  

See? No biggie.  So I finished mixing it then put it in the oven.  This time, for the MINIMUM amount of time.  Well 20-something minutes later I went to the kitchen and saw there was a little over a minute left on the timer.  I decided to look at the cake.  DRATS! This one was a little overdone as well.  UGH!  I immediately took it out and thought of what I could do.  Then it came to me.  Use a LOT of icing! The more icing, the more moist the cake will be. VIOLA!


So I iced the first layer, went to watch some TV, then went back to ice the second layer.  To my surprise, I ran out of icing.  So I had to scrape EVERY last bit of icing out of the can and put it in the lid of the jar to color it.  Luckily I had JUST enough to make my mushroom head.  Considering I didn't have piping bags, I think I did a pretty good job.  I stood back and looked at my creation and was pretty satisfied.

The only thing missing was a black outline, and it would be done.  So I did the black outline, patted myself on the back, then put the lid on.  AAAAAAH! STINKIN LID! It squished my cake. :(  So since I was out of icing my only option was to scrape the icing off the inside of the lid and put it back on my cake.  The end product was actually not TOO noticeably messed up, however I could not put the lid on.  Who cares, I'll just stick it in the fridge.

All in all, I am FAIRLY proud of my masterpiece.  It tasted decent, and my dad even said that he thought it was good. YAY ME!  I think for as much as went wrong with this cake, it turned out to be a success.  I will not, however, be making my own wedding cake.  I'm no cake boss yet.