Monday, October 4, 2010

making lemonade

While I bake often for some reason I had never made a cake from scratch before. So, for Papa's birthday I made a first attempt and it was in word: Bad.

Katie (with a half-eaten cake in front of her): I think I'm all done Mama.

Papa: That was the litmus test you know.

No idea what I did wrong. It was so disappointing. I even made strawberry butter cream frosting, which we all tried to eat off the awful cake.

We had some leftover frosting, so we made sugar cookies today in order to salvage some of the labor that went into making that.

I will be making cakes over the next few weeks to try to ameliorate this situation.

In the meantime, here is my strawberry frosting recipe, which took me many batches to perfect.

Strawberry Butter Cream Frosting

1 C. unsalted butter (two cubes)

1 C. fresh or frozen strawberries, hulled

2 lbs. powdered sugar (two boxes)

1. Press strawberries through a sieve to get rid of as much liquid as possible. Result should yield approximately 1/2 C. strawberry pulp.

2. Puree pulp.

3. Cream butter with a hand mixer.

4. Add powdered sugar and pulp little by little while with hand mixer on low until you reach desired consistency.

5 comments:

Tabitha said...

LOL been there... oh well at least you had the frosting! Greg just had his birthday too, Sept. 29th. For his birthday I made a new recipe out of Joy of Cooking, that I am recommending - it was soooooooo delicious (if you like dark chocolate):
http://books.google.com/books?id=tbyW2LeXIOkC&pg=PA931&lpg=PA931&dq=sour+cream+fudge+cake+joy+of+cooking&source=bl&ots=fOSGe95uDT&sig=EQIZ8VyeYn9-w4hz_x-GiJ5Afbs&hl=en&ei=GWCqTM21O4HUtQP107GoAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

That is a link to the recipe Sour Cream Fudge Cake... It was really easy and super moist and so dark it was black! So if you like chocolate I recommend giving it a try during your cake making extravaganza!

Small Burst said...

sorry to hear about your cake. hope you have better luck on your next one. That frosting sounds so yummy. I just printed out the recipe. Thanks!!

annabski said...

I've so done that. Think St. Patty's day... green, flat, GROSS!!! This is why I always use a cake mix. I love to cook and come up with cookie recipes but cakes are way to easy to mess up. Plus they're always on sale for like 89 cents!

Sandy a la Mode said...

awwww so sorry to hear about your cake!! :( that frosting does sound really yummy though!! good luck on future attempts!

jen@odbt said...

Boo to the cake but yah to all the cakes you'll be baking. I'm sure your helpers are quite excited over this challenge. It will definitely be a yummy one. Good luck!