I Made a Cake!

This past Friday, I baked and frosted a cake! Some good friends of mine got engaged, so we had them over for dinner last night. I made the cake a day in advance so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it the day of – good planning, right? 😉

I took some pictures that will show you what I did during the process, and also give you some tips of things TO do and things NOT to do!

This cake is SUPER good! It’s technically for a huge sheet cake, but you can use it for a regular 9 by 13-inch cake as well.

Here is the recipe if you want to try it: Almond cake with almond frosting

I should note that I have made this cake before, for my graduation party last year. I made WAY too much cake…but it was so good I’ve been dying to make it again!

If you look at the picture, I think you’ll agree with me…Yikes! That is 8 batches of cake total. 2 for each layer, 2 layers in each cake, 2 cakes. I was in the kitchen making them for 8+ hours…

We were sending people home with cake left and right and we still had some left over!

The one on the right is the one I made Friday.

First, I made the cake. It is important to make the cake first because then you can make the frosting while the cake is baking and be more efficient.

Oh! Before you pour the batter into the cake pans, you really ought to flour them. This involves spraying the pan with non-stick spray and then dumping in about a handful of flour. Shake the flour around the pan until it coats the whole pan and discard the leftover flour:

This makes it easier to get the cakes out of the pans after they’re done baking. If you’re just going to serve the cake out of the pan, you do not need to flour it. Spraying it will do just fine!

Now, while the cake is baking…

It’s time to make the frosting! This particular frosting is made on the stove, so DO NOT let it burn! It tastes better unburnt. Trust me – I’ve been there.

This is probably my most favorite frosting in the entire world! I’m not kidding. It goes so well with the cake, but unfortunately, this frosting has a tendency to harden when it cools off or comes in contact with the cake. Like, the instant you pour it onto the cake, it starts to harden. Even though this is what I did for this cake, DO NOT make a layer cake with this frosting! DO NOT. It just doesn’t work. The frosting solidifies too quickly and fails to stick to the sides. You will save yourself so much pain if you heed my warning! It gave me trouble the first time I tried it for my graduation too. You can do as the recipe says however, and make a pan cake (no layers) and pour the frosting on while it’s warm AND while the cake is still warm too. It would work wonderfully then! That’s what I’m going to do from now on.

When you are making a layer cake, you MUST wait until the cake is cooled until you start frosting/layering. If you try to get the cake out of the pan before it’s cooled, it will fall apart. That would ruin everything very quickly, so BE PATIENT!

After the cakes have cooled, use a fork to loosen the cake from the sides of the pan and gently invert the cake on to a smooth surface. I recommend having the plate you intend to use to structure the cake handy. Put a little bit of frosting on the plate and then place the first layer on top. The little bit of frosting on the bottom helps to make sure the cake stays in place while you’re decorating it.

Frost the top of the first cake and place the second cake on top of that one, then frost the top of the second cake and the sides. This is where that amazing frosting failed me 🙁

Yeah…not a good time. I ended up scraping the sides off and finding a different recipe to frost the sides. That frosting was more sticky and did not solidify upon contact with the cake, making it much easier to frost! I also used this recipe to decorate the cake’s edges 🙂 I colored it to be extra fancy!

Let’s just say I’ve learned my lesson with that frosting…..