I murdered a cake.

Really. I did.

I have always loved to bake. I remember learning to cook in elementary school. I love to tell the story about the time I learned to make rice pudding. My Mom said that my Dad loved it, and I think I made at least three batches of it in one night. In the final batch, I misread the amount of salt to go in. It should have been 1/4 teaspoon. Well, I put in 1/4 cup. And that's why we're still talking about it almost 20 years later.

Moving on a few years... my parents once left me alone for a whole Saturday. I baked every recipe on the back of the Bisquick box. At least it all turned out to be quite tasty. How can you ruin a Bisquick recipe? *knocking on wood* Then there was the time I made cilantro lime chicken. At the time I made the recipe, I had never had cilantro before so I had no idea what I was doing. HELLO! It was awful. I would guess that in the time since then- maybe 11 or 12 years- I have yet to ingest a combined amount of cilantro as was on that one chicken breast I ate.

A few years ago, I bought an easy-to-make-and-decorate cake recipe book. I whipped up a spice cake and began to shape it into a pumpkin. I was going to frost it orange. You'd have to see it. It was going to be awesome. It was that evening that I learned that, while I can bake very tasty treats, I cannot decorate them. I can't remember the exact circumstances as to why I needed to relocate this cake, or why I needed help, but I had asked my Mom to help me move this cake. She picked it up, on either side with her hands and moved this cake. I'm not saying she lifted the cake by a plate... I'm saying she picked up the CAKE. And then declared that she couldn't have made it look any worse than it already did. Thanks, Mom.

Since then I have come to terms with my terrible decorating skills. I mean, who cares what it looks like if it is totally delicious? I don't. Actually, I take that back. If I don't know you, then it matters a lot. I do judge others by the appearance of their food. Potlucks creep me out. Moving on...

Tonight I decided to try a super yummy looking cake recipe from my Taste of Home Simple & Delicious magazine, "Quicker Blue-Ribbon Peanut Butter Torte."

Peanut butter. Chocolate. Butterfinger topping. I mean, this sounded like heaven. I'm sure you can tell by the tone of this blog that I have a horror story to tell you. I think where I went wrong was not enough heavy whipping cream. I used what I had, put whole milk in the rest, let chill, blah, blah, blah. It didn't work. It was too soupy, but I tried to assemble it anyway. First, let me say, that goop was delicious. Now let me say, I had to turn this cake into a trifle. I just picked up the cake- kind of like my Mom did the pumpkin cake- and dropped it into a bowl. Not my trifle bowl because it's holding my onions and at this point, I am way too frustrated to wash it. My husband walked in and I innocently told him I ruined the cake and he interrupted me with "you always have to make a trifle." I'm not going to complain. The man knows what a trifle is and it doesn't matter that he knows from years of my cake-making failures. I ate some of it and regardless of what it looks like, it is so good. I didn't even fool with the frosting and Butterfingers. No point. I have different plans for them- I will succeed at this cake! Just not today. Or tomorrow. But seriously, it looks GROSS:

 

 

Yes, folks. That cake never stood a chance. I murdered the poor thing. But I'm still going to eat it. And it's going to be delicious.