Baking

So, after cooking some meals, I decided to take a break and try my hand at baking.  Over two days, I made a cake and chocolate chip cookies.  Now the cookies weren't hard, just slightly time consuming.  The cake, however, was in a league of it's own.

If you've ever made a cake from a cake mix, it isn't very hard.  You add some eggs and water, mix it, put it in a pan, and throw it in the oven.  It's deceptively easy.  Trying to make it from scratch, however, is a whole lot different.

It took me about an hour just to mix the cake batter.  The recipe was to make two 8" cakes, which is a lot of cake.  I made a classic white cake, with a whole lot of butter and a whole lot of sugar.  While it was cooking, I turned my attention to finding an icing recipe.

The morning of cake day, my mother had warned me that icing was very difficult.  I didn't believe her.  How hard could it be, right?

Very hard.  I decided on a buttercream icing recipe, and it was, in essence, just a whole lot of butter and confectioner's sugar.  It took about 30 minutes of whipping before it finally started to resemble icing.  It was delicious, and I was excited to assemble my cake.  I had no idea how difficult that would prove to be.

First of all, I didn't have the correct icing utensils, aka a big, long, flat spatula.  So I had to use a rubber spatula and a knife. It took me a ridiculously long time to ice the cake.  Apparently, you are supposed to just sort of glop the icing on the cake and not really spread it, but I didn't know that.  I tried spreading the icing and chunks of cake would come along with the icing.  It was a mess.


But my god, it was delicious.

The cookies were not nearly as difficult.  I simply used the classic Tollhouse recipe I found online and made a whole bunch of cookies to share with the crew team.