baking escapade #1

A month or so ago, mom showed me a delicious looking cake that caught her eye while at the grocery store checkout. It was on the cover of a baking magazine. Immediately, I knew that at some point I would be baking this cake... all that was required was the appropriate special occasion. Conveniently, Mom's birthday was yesterday and I was off work on Friday for appointments.

Now, this was no chore. I absolutely love to grocery shop, bake, and decorate. This combined all three, so given free rein to spend whatever amount required to procure the necessary ingredients, I hit up the local Super Store.

Unfortunately, the recipe calls for whipping cream, and one of the requirements of mom's dessert was that it be dairy-free. Whipping cream doesn't seem to come in a dairy-free version (not at the store I was at anyway), so ditched the icing recipe in the magazine and bought a big bag of icing sugar. White icing is pretty simple and while I'm sure the recipe in the magazine would be delicious (you can't go wrong with 4 cups of white chocolate chips), I decided to stick with what I know.

The cake itself was a devil's food cake mix... I'd probably go for homemade next time. It was certainly tasty but I think a deeper chocolate would help balance out the sweet icing. I can't critique the combination too much because the original recipe icing might not have been as sweet.

I whipped up the icing with quite a few tablespoons of margarine, a little vanilla and peppermint extract, adding water until it wasn't too thick. Dad was my taste tester and said it wasn't too pepperminty... I didn't want the icing to be overpowering because there were peppermint patties and dark chocolate peppermint cups to be added as well.

It was at this point that I realized I was supposed to add peppermint extract to the cake mix itself. I had been following the recipe on the box. I'll call it creative license.

To the right you will see the beginning stages of the cake assembly. I borrowed my roommate's cake leveler to cut off the top of the bottom layer so it would be flat, and topped it will the buttercream icing mixed with green sprinkles and chopped peppermint cups.

 After applying the top layer, copius amounts of icung (I used almost the entire 1 kg bag of icing sugar), and decorations, this is the end result:

Happy birthday, Mom!