Hello, my name is Mod Girl and baking a cake from scratch totally stresses me out.
I know some of you, especially my homemade cake baking diva friends (ahem, Beth and Mama), are rolling your eyes and laughing. And, I guess it does sound rather ridiculous for the unofficial "cupcake mom" of the kindergarten class to be saying this, but friends, baking a cake when you don't start with a mix is serious business and it scares me.
Oh, I can crank out cute cupcakes in honor of any event going on at school that is for five year-olds, but let me tell you about real cake baking and me...
A few weeks ago my friend Margaret asked me if I would provide a cake to put on the dessert table for our church's annual missions banquet. I happily agreed to contribute a (homemade) confection and you better believe I had visions of presenting a big, tall cake slathered in gooey icing made from scratch by me. Hah!
I think it was exactly four days later that I was wailing to my mother over the phone, "I'm just not at the point in my life where I can bake a cake from scratch!"
You see I'd done some research. A caramel cake perhaps... but twenty minutes alone to make the burnt sugar frosting. Nope! A carrot cake, I love carrot cake, with homemade cream cheese icing... but FIVE CUPS of grated carrots. No way, baby! Red velvet? German chocolate? Italian cream? Overwhelming, completely overwhelming. That's when I started to shut down. I don't even own a flour sifter!
Now I realize part of my problem was that I had lofty, lofty goals, but you have to understand my reasoning. My thinking was that if I was going to go to the trouble of making a cake from scratch then it should be worth it, totally worth it, as in deliciously worth it. Decadent. A simple homemade cake wouldn't do. All I really managed to do was set myself up for failure.
At this point I doubt if you're even wondering if I actually followed through and made a cake from scratch! I confess, I used an old faithful, tried and true recipe; I simply doctored up a cake mix. I made an easy and decent Chocolate, Chocolate Chip Cake instead of a completely homemade cake that was swooningly delicious.
And after I baked it I got online to find out exactly how to make a confectioners sugar glaze to drizzle on top and make it pretty. Who knew it only takes water and powdered sugar?!
So there you have it. I bake cakes with cake mixes and I use canned frosting, anything more stresses me out. Just keeping it real!
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