Kitchen Explicatives

I have to say that my expectations for the weekend were not only met, but exceeded. I had a blast with Mary Alice and Steven. The bonfire at the Thain's turned out to be an indoor party, due to rain and freezing temperatures. We had such a good time that I didn't leave until 11:30 and ended up staying with friends in Columbia. And then I went to First Pres the next morning (all in the same outfit, mind you). The sermon was awesome! And the Mt. Pleasant Christmas parade was super fun -- good food, good beer, good floats, and watching my mom act as stilly as a 4 year old.

That brings us to last night. I needed to make a dessert for work today. I tossed around a few ideas in my head of recipes that I'd made before. But I decided to try something new. It sounds like the easiest cake in the world to make so I gave it a whirl. It's called "Diet Coke cake" and all you do is mix a box of cake mix with a can of diet coke, and bake as directed. Who could screw that up?

My game plan was to bake 2 round cakes and make some sort of icing. The batter tasted good and the cakes looked good as they came out of the oven. While they were baking, I started making homemade chocolate buttercream frosting. I flipped one cake out on to the cake carrying thing. Disaster. Most of the bottom of the cake was stuck to the pan and then it all just crumbled to several pieces. Ugh. There was cussing. I was on the phone with Mary Glenn, who is the most incredible baker. We had to get off the phone so I could call Mrs. Shelton because I knew she could relate to my kitchen troubles. (I've heard numerous stories of her things not turning out right, burning, etc. and her cussing in the kitchen.) Her suggestion: turn it into a trifoil. That would be great, but I wanted to use the buttercream frosting.

After I calmed down a bit, I tried to turn out the second cake. Now, this will be a small, single layer cake. Result: same thing, but not quite as bad. And, yes, I did grease the pans. So it was cracked and will fall apart as soon as you try to cut it, but I slapped some frosting on there anyway and brought it to work this morning. It doesn't look pretty, but it should taste good. We shall see.