How To Prepare

A half-assed cake.

Remember back in the day, when it was your birthday? Your mom would whip up a Betty Crocker cake in a square pan and then spend the next fifteen minutes pondering what the eff the deal was with the frosting she was attempting to spread across the top of the still-in-the-pan cake? Those were the days.

However, those cakes are best left back there where they belong. We can do a bit better than that, I think.

Saturday was Hei’s dad’s birthday so I spent my Friday putting together the cake.

If I have to tell you how to make the cake, well I don’t know. Just make the cake. I made two because I had two boxes and couldn’t choose. Yes, boxes. I’m not made of time, you know? So, I had one golden and one funfetti and that sounds sort of iffy but I’m a brave girl so I forged ahead with my half-assed plan for the cake he wanted. It involved half a pack of Oreo’s, a package of pudding, a can of buttercream frosting and these two cakes. That sounds like a mess, doesn’t it?

Make your cakes and let them cool. By cool I don’t mean, “Hey, I can touch the pan so let’s poke it!” I mean cool. Or else it’ll just break and you’ll end up pasting it all back together.

Is it cool yet? No? Well, that’s ok, because here’s where we start up some trouble. I make the pudding and stuff that aside to set while I crush up all but four Oreos in the blender. Pudding set yet? Now dump it in on top of your Oreo dirt and mix it.

Let’s not say what that looks like. It’s not sexy, I’ll tell you that.
Anyway, put that in the fridge again. Check cakes. Check cakes. Check cakes. Decide that’s long enough or you’ll go insane. Get some plates. Cover your cakes and flip them out of the pan. Then turn the pan upside down and put the cakes on there. We’re going to level some cakes.

There’s a toothpick method, where you measure everything out and such and then cut. Then there’s the two objects the same size on either side of the cake method, but I’m going to use the fuckit method. That’s where you look around for some toothpicks or objects for like thirty seconds and then say fuckit and do it by eye anyway.
I put the pan slightly over the edge of the counter. Not too much or you’ll flip the dang cake onto the floor and I don’t know about you but I’m betting there’s a cat down there just waiting for a screw up. No, they don’t want the cake, they just want to be close enough to the cake to sniff it and let me know they don’t want any cake. Jerks.
Slice into the top. All that rounded fluffy pillow look on the top has to go. Put it aside. Don’t eat it all.
The reason the pan is on the edge of the counter is so I can get my hand under the edge and turn as I go. So, there I am crouched down and staring with a knife in my hand, looking all very serious and slicing away. Is it level yet? How about now? You know what? You better stop there anyway or you’ll have one unlevel centimeter of cake left and they’ll have to take you away in a “Hugs for me!” coat. It doesn’t matter anyway, that’s what the filling is for. Now cut them in half the same way and set the tops aside. I use a cutting board because it’s thin enough to just slide right between the layers and lift away:

Say hi to my Neurofuzzy!

Ohmigawd there are cakes everywhere. How is there cake on my toaster? Don’t ask, I’m on a time limit for cake!

You need a turntable. I… do not own a turntable. I looked at the snazzy ones at the store and looked at the prices and decided I didn’t use one enough to justify thirty dollar expenditures. You know what I’m going to do instead? Open my microwave and take out the platter in there and the little plastic rollie thingie underneath it. The rollie thingie has a little stem on the bottom where it plugs into the floor of the microwave and that’s going to get in the way.
So, I’m going to stick it on a bowl.

Hurray, free turntable!
Sandra Lee doesn’t teach you these kinds of shady things! Oh, btw, wash that platter, you don’t know where it’s been.

Now I put down my wax paper and plop a bottom layer on there. Retrieve pudding poo and slather some of that on top working from the middle outward. Seriously, one big plop of it in the middle, then use your spreader to pull it out as you turn the cake. Not too close to the edges though, or our icing will look dirty. Ask me how I know!

Now I put on a top layer of the other kind of cake. Line up the sides first, then slide it off cutting board, or whatever, letting the filling kind of glue it down as you go.
The next layer should also be top layer, then the top layer should be the remaining bottom layer upside down.

Now, remember when I told you to be patient and let the cakes cool or they’d tear? Remember when I told you not to eat all the parts you’d sliced off the top? Well, of course I wasn’t patient because I’m me so that’s why my top layer has that ancient ruins look going on on the right corner. Not a problem, unless you ate all the scraps. Then? Well, that sucks.

Just cut out a piece and fill that right up.

Now you need a crumb coat.
Take about one third, one fourth of your frosting and plop it right on top, in the middle. It’s not a lot but we don’t really need a lot because we’re going to paint over this later. This should be thin. Using your spreader, turn the cake and pull out and downward from the top and down the sides. Do not lift the spreader. I can’t stress that enough, if you lift it you will be sorry. Keep turning and pulling and spreading until every thing’s pretty much covered and even. Then hold your spreader vertically and give the cake a spin to even down the icing on the sides.

That’s some fug right there, isn’t it? My spreader is a butter spreader, because I feel like it. No, actually it’s so I don’t get too enthusiastic and glop frosting willy nilly. Plus I need it’s curved edge for something later.
If yours looks like mine you better touch up the edges a bit instead of licking frosting and then put that beast in the fridge to get cold.
Is it cold yet?
How about now?
Go find a hobby.
After about an hour, remember cake and realize it probably is cold by now. Retrieve cake from the fridge. Realize you have twenty minutes left to get this beast in some kind of order. Ponder, as you dump the remainder of the frosting on there, why it is that this semi-homemade shit isn’t any less time or dish consuming than if you’d done it all by hand and then remember you don’t give a fig to make any damn homemade pudding.
Moving on!

Spread the rest of the frosting out and down and around and turn and turn and stretch and bend and get frosting under your rings. Oh, fun!
When you get it to how you like it, take the curved edge of the knife and press the end lightly flat down in the center. Pull it toward you in a wavy motion while you turn the cake slowly. Repeat that until you have little waves in a circle across the top of your cake. You can just keep doing it and redoing it all you like until you’re pleased with the result. Unless you’re me and then you have about five minutes to finish. There will be a flat circle in the middle, but that’s cool because remember the four Oreo’s I didn’t put in the blender?

I cut three in half with a sharp blade, a knife is probably going to crush up everything so unless it’s really sharp, I’d stick to a blade. The whole one goes flat side down in the center, over the leftover circle. The halves go cut side down at regular intervals around it. Now tilt them at a jaunty angle, if you’re into jaunty. Yay, so jaunty!

Now I stick it on my burnt-up travelin’ pan, throw away wax paper, take picture, realize it needs another swipe around the edges, finish cake in only two minutes past when it was supposed to be ready.

It looks a little lopsided. It may have been, it didn’t live long enough for me to notice. No one else did, that’s certain. No it doesn’t look like Ace Of Cakes made it, but it doesn’t look like the rectangular pan cake of yesteryear, either, so win!

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Tags: cake, cake deocorating, cooking, how to make fugly cakes yay!

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