The best cake I ever did bake and decorate.

One of the great things about summer is I have time to do fun things that I would otherwise likely not be able to do. So rather than buying a cake for Collyn's birthday, or making one from a mix and just spreading some frosting on it, I went a little more in depth. She expressed a fondness for spice cake, so I found a recipe to make one from scratch. Cakes I still need recipes for, although I did invent a great plum and cherry tart the other day. I don't have any round cake pans, but I have some round corningware baking dishes and those sort of worked. I say sort of, because in spite of greasing and flouring the dishes, the cake still stuck on the bottom. I think I may have been a little light on the flour. At any rate, when I dumped the cake out, a bottom layer peeled off and had to be sealed on with icing. The cake was good, not great, because of a few things:

1. The recipe called for 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp of baking soda and I put in 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda. I realized my mistake right away and scooped out the extra to the best of my estimation.

2. My baking powder is old because I don't bake often, and baking powder tends to lose its leavening ability with time due to the inclusion of acid and the high humidity this close to the ocean. As a result, the cake was a little heavy.

3. The recipe called for buttermilk, allowing a substitution of "sour milk" which a cup of milk that includes 1 tbs of lemon juice. The substitution probably works ok if the milk has some fat (i.e. whole or at least 2%) but my milk is skim.

All in all, it still tasted great, but the real success was the decorating job. I went and snagged a bunch of blooms from the park at the end of my street, and Tada!
















































































and of course, the birthday girl.