The Cake

Since it took me weeks to prepare (and psych myself up) for making Sam's cake, it is only fitting the cake should receive its very own blog post. Again, a friend shared this cake with me on Pinterest, and I decided to go for it. When I first saw the cake, I thought it might be a challenge, but really thought it looked cool. Then, I saw the inside of the cake, which is beyond cool. But, also made me rethink my decision to make my child's birthday cake. My child's birthday cake that other people would actually see. I mean I've done cupcakes before. Cupcakes I can handle, but a cake?! I was a little intimidated by the prospect of a from scratch cake...I'm definitely more of a "semi-homemade with Sandra Lee" kind of girl. A friend convinced me I could do it with box cake, so I went for it.

I gathered my ingredients, and borrowed some gel food coloring from a much more experienced birthday cake creator. Day one was mixing, coloring, baking, cooling and leveling the cakes. Since I needed a yellow layer and a black layer, I tinted a yellow mix and a chocolate mix. I finished with four total layers, which I froze overnight on Wednesday.

Thursday morning, while the boys were at preschool, I gathered my supplies. The most important of which was this incredibly handy step-by-step photo tutorial of how to cut the cake, hence the laptop.

 

Then I unwrapped my layers and got to sawing with my bread knife. 

I think this was the most nerve-wracking part because the whole time I'm thinking: "I hope you know what you are doing. This better not be a total fail. I guess there is always the Wal-Mart bakery." When your counter starts to look like this, you might panic a bit.

 And it only gets worse, before it gets better.

But, it does get better, and you start to think: "Maybe I can follow simple instructions. Maybe this cake might actually look like it's supposed to when we cut it open. Maybe I'll bake my children's birthday cake's more often. Hey, wait...let's not get carried away here.

Then, these puppies (four total, I cut & photographed them in pairs) went back into the freezer overnight Thursday. Friday evening I pulled them out and covered them with a yummy chocolate buttercream I whipped up using butter, powdered sugar, cocoa, vanilla & milk. Thankfully by this point my mom was in house to help and was a great assistant on the parts that sort of crumbled or broke. We excavated the first cake and then covered with oreos, and soon moved onto the second cake. I already had some white cake boards, from when we created this beauty. So, I flipped it over to the cardboard side, to match my construction decor, and we were in business.

And what do you know, when we sliced it...it actually looked like it was supposed to. (Although mine didn't stay together as neatly as the original (probably because I used box cake), but overall I was pleased with my attempts. Best of all, the cake tasted fabulous. We barely finished the one cake, so we're still enjoying cake #2. FYI, it goes great with a cold glass of milk.