Some friends invited us to their house for a 4th of July bbq and block party. Since I don't cook - I always bring desserts with me to bbqs and potlucks. The last time these friends invited us over for a potluck I made Guinness & Bailey's chocolate cupcakes, so I knew I had to step up my game for this one. I decided to try my hand at a cake. For all the cookie and cupcake baking I do, I can't remember the last time I made an actual cake. Not content to make a regular cake, I decided to make a Red and Blue Velvet layer cake with cream cheese frosting.
No need to adjust your computer monitors - the batter turned out turquoise and dark pink - not quite the blue and red I was going for. I'm so used to dealing with cookie batter - that I momentarily freaked out when I saw how runny and liquidy the cake batter was.
I love my Pampered Chef cake pans. They cooked the cake so evenly and were a breeze to clean. I cut each of these cakes in half (vertically) to make a 4-layer cake.
My favorite part of the cake is the frosting - I used a cream cheese frosting. Buttercream is too sweet for my taste - it makes my teeth hurt. But the cream cheese frosting is perfect. I have no idea how people get their frosting to look so smooth. I was proud of myself for putting on a crumb coat and letting it harden in the fridge for an hour. But even going that extra mile I couldn't get the frosting to look smooth. So I embraced the messiness of it and made the swirls part of the decoration.
The original decorating plan was to frost a small American flag on the cake. Seeing as how this was the first cake I've ever frosted - that was a lofty, unreachable, goal. Instead, I broke out a star cookie cutter and used it as a stencil and poured sprinkles onto the cake. Viola!
I wish I had a better picture to show you of the inside of the cake. It looks unappetizing, but I gotta tell you, it was DELICIOUS! I'm bummed I couldn't evenly divide the cakes in half - but I figure that just takes practice. As yummy as the cake was - I think I'll stick with cookies and cupcakes.
