Happy Birthday to My Mother!

But first, here's the Jeopardy style game pitting attendings against residents. We were The Attenders (do you get it?), and they were The Pseudo-Sumo Cerebri (that's a little more obscure). A great time was had by all, and we were tied up until Final Jeopardy, at which point my Mad Cow kicked in and I couldn't save us. Of course, my 2 teammates are much younger than me, so I don't know what their excuse is! Also, fellow Captain America and I were a little peeved that the Hulk didn't go buy the full Ironman outfit like he was supposed to (I'm not bitter or anything.)


On to cake! If you were here in 2011, you may remember I made my mother an Auburn Velvet Cake that was all orange inside. It was a great hit, so I decided to do another one this year, but make the middle layer blue. Somehow my orange is not as bright as the last one...hmmmm....how much food coloring DID I use last time?


I couldn't get the dark blue I wanted, this is more a Florida Gator blue - sorry!


What the heck? Was there a mouse hiding in the pan when I poured in the batter? This is the bottom that has a dent - the top looked fine. Any ideas from you bakers out there? I shook the pan to even out the batter and thought it looked fine when it went in.


Alas, the name of this post could've been Last Dance by Donna Summer, as my beloved wedding-gift Mixmaster hand mixer continually jammed up to the point of non-functionality. The mixing blades kept hitting each other and getting stuck - warped after 21 years. At least it made it till the icing was creamy.


Perhaps I should've saved the chopped pecans for the top of the cake...or chopped them a little finer.


I could've just stopped here and left you with a lovely picture of a nice cake...but you know I'm more about different ways I screw things up...so on with it.


I think you're supposed to cut the puffy top off each cake layer; perhaps that's how other people get them to lie flat. Anyway, there were gaps on the sides that I couldn't get the icing to stick to, and the pecan chunks wanted to drip off the sides - lovely!


To add insult to injury, this is apparently not the cover that goes with this cake plate. It's larger in diameter than the plate, so would just rest on the cake itself if I let it go.


Tomorrow I'll show you how it looked on the inside....