Birthday Cake

This year I decided to take a stab at making my own birthday cake. I had grand plans to make this Bakerella cake from scratch, but in the end my time was limited. In the end I decided to just make a yellow box cake with homemade, pink butter cream frosting. This ended up being perfect and SO delicious too!

I used two Betty Crocker yellow cake box mixes. However, rather than follow their baking directions (I mentioned this many moons ago in one of my very first blog posts) I substituted milk for water and melted butter for oil. I learned from a coworker and a chef friend that many box cake mixes are essentially the same as the ingredients you mix from scratch so by making these simple substitutions your cake tastes much more homemade.

I divided the cake batter into three nine inch pans (not four as you would often do for two box mixes). Once the cakes were done I removed them from the oven and let them cool for just five minutes in the pan. I then popped them out (and realized how Williams Sonoma Goldtouch pans are worth every.single.penny and no other pan compares) and quickly wrapped them in plastic wrap to lock in moisture per Bakerella's instructions. After several hours the cakes were cool and ready to be frosted. However, I again took Bakerella's advice and sprayed sugar water on the cake to ensure it would stay moist once frosted (it is now Tuesday and the cake is STILL moist as if I just baked it).

I frosted the first layer and then added some strawberries for added flavor. I think lemon curd would have been divine as well, but I love good berries. I added my second layer and realized that, thankfully, two layers was more than enough. This was a good thing considering the third cake did not survive...the powers of Goldtouch pans are many!

I have to say that baking my first birthday cake was far less intimidating than I originally anticipated nor did the process take all day as I expected. Using boxed mixes with homemade elements like frosting most definitely lightened my load.

I thought the cake was just delicious and pretty too. Of course, I guess pink frosting and pearls can make even the ugliest thing look perfect :)