Aunt Jan's Birthday....The cake!

"Ugly cakes are fine. Mama made some of the ugliest cakes there were, but they always were the best cakes I ever ate!" ~Klu Hoggard (My Daddy)

I just had to post the continuation of Aunt Jan's Birthday....the cake! It was something I agonized over prior to the day because it was something I had never done and I was trying to replicate a cake my Grandmother made often, which was always beautiful and tasted wonderful...pretty big shoes to fill!

Angel food cake, with 7 minute frosting. I spent quite some time on the internet to find the recipes for both and I opted to go with the Angel food cake from a box and concentrate on the frosting.  The original recipe was from the Betty Crocker recipe book from the 60s and I had to get my mom's Angel cake pan which seemed complicated enough!  I started at 6am on the big day, I remembered that 7 minute frosting hardened rather quickly and I wanted it to be fresh. Mixing the cake and 'pouring' it into the pan was no problem.  To cool it recommended putting it on a bottle upside down....that even went well!

It had to sit like this until completely cool...about 1-1/2 hours.  Unfortunately, the bottle got stuck! As you can see, I would need to pull the bottle through the cake to get it off!! Apparently putting a hot cake pan on a bottle makes a pretty good seal!! After a lot of pulling and tugging and cussing it finally broke free!! Phew!

Of course I had to use the traditional Birthday plate to make it extra special...

Now the frosting.... It requires that you mix only 2 egg whites, cream of tartar, water and sugar in a stainless steel bowl for one minute, then place on a double boiler with boiling water for 7 minutes, add vanilla, then continue to mix until stiff peaks form....easy, right?? Well I don't have a hand held mixer, so I opted to use my immersible blender with the whisk attachment....

I added blue food coloring since it's Aunt Jan's favorite color!

Talk about a mess!!! Apparently my bowl was too shallow, though I picked the big bowl as I understand the frosting amount would quadruple in size.....the pan got really hot, which required mits and the frosting splattered everywhere, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop it!!

....I apparently whipped it for too long, it hardened so quickly I couldn't spread it!! Talk about an UGLY cake!!! By now it's time to take it to Aunt Jan, so this was going to have to do!!

It ended up tasting very good, and even tasted like my Grandmother's cake, but boy was it ugly! I believe Jan appreciated it very much though so it was all good! This is obviously something that takes practice!




I made homemade pizza for lunch and Lily wanted badly to participate in all of that....she just quietly kept an eye on the food as Aunt Jan ate!

  

Lily then enjoyed seeing Aunt Jan again and they quickly got reacquainted!!....remember it's always 'All about Lily!'

My Mom seemed to enjoy the day as well!

We then went and got them both pedicures with foot massages and then to a nice steak dinner! We had a great time!! I think that Aunt Jan felt special on her birthday, and we felt special to be able to share it with her!!  

Aunt Jan is back home in Colorado now, but this is a birthday we won't soon forget!! <3


::Hugs::

Cheri