10 Things No One Tells You About Baking a Birthday Cake
I’m not a baker–in fact, I hardly spend any time in the kitchen at all–but for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to make my daughter Fia’s birthday cake. And let her help. (Did I mention she’s 3?) Here’s what I learned during the debacle.
1. When your layers are done baking, you’re supposed to cut the tops off so you can stack them evenly.
2. If you don’t cut the layers, you’ll ruin the cake when you try to stack it. Especially if you frosted before stacking. Whoops!
3. Once you’ve botched the layering, you’ll need three pounds of frosting to fix it. Plus a can of Reddi-Wip. And Xanax.
4. Using the excuse “I didn’t buy a cake because I wanted my 3-year-old to help me bake it” doesn’t fly. Everyone knows you were being a show off.
5. Neither does “The cake reflects Fia’s creative spirit.” Because, let’s be honest, even guests to a kid’s birthday party are judgey.
6. Your husband will call you the “anti-Martha Stewart.” You’ll act like you don’t care, but secretly you do.
7. Sprinkles will cover up any decorating disaster. The gel-icing crap is like trying to decorate with old, gummy toothpaste.
8. Cake out of a box and frosting out of a container isn’t impressive; what you do with it is impressive, and if you’re utterly hopeless in the kitchen (like I am) you’re not going to come up with a showstopper.
9. If your cake turns out as disastrously bad as mine did, start serving drinks the minute your guests arrive (they’ll get tipsy and be less likely to notice how bad it really is).
10. If you failed Home-Economics in high school (and have learned nothing since), you shouldn’t attempt this feat. Go to the bakery around the corner instead.
More Must-Clicks:
How to Tell When a Cake is Done
How to Get a Cake Out of the Pan
CasaSugar
Simply Stated
The Bump blog
The Knot blog
The Married Chick on MSN Living
Wedding Channel
It could have been worse. Much worse. Trust me. I made a 3-layer cake for my daughter’s 2nd birthday. It turned out beautifully. I had an extra layer and, not wanting it to go to waste, thought I’d decorate it for my sister’s 40th birthday. Their birthdays are only days apart and we happened to celebrating them on the same day. But what to do with one measly layer? My sister was turning 40, so I chopped it and half, put the two half circles on their sides to make a hill. Get it? 40 and over the hill. Then I covered it in green icing. Only I couldn’t achieve grass green, just a sad mint green. Then I covered it with 40 candles each decked out with little pipecleaner arms and legs. The idea was to make them look like they were running up the hill. One candle (my sister) was positioned over the hill. Well, the pipecleaners all caught on fire and the entire thing went up in flames. We’re talking flames that were at least 2 feet high. (I would have attached a picture but I didn’t see where I could.) The best part was my sister’s face when she saw the debacle. She didn’t seem the least bit alarmed to walk in and see 2-foot flames shooting from her cake. Instead she had this look of disgust like “WTF is that ugly blog. Martha would not approve.” Turns out, that is EXACTLY what she was thinking! So Jill, yay for the effort. I’m sure Fia had fun and that’s all that really matters. PS: I love that picture!