I know it has been forever since my last post, but time flies when you're having fun! The past few months have gone by in the blink of an eye. It's hard to believe that I have been in San Diego for four months already! Life has been crazy but wonderful. Work keeps me busy during the week, and the weekends have been jam packed with gardening, failed surfing attempts, cooking, whiling away the hours in my hammock with a good book, cruising the dog beach with Kairi, and exploring my new city.But enough about me and back to the purpose of this post...cakes! A birthday is not a birthday without cake, am I right? So far this year we've celebrated two birthdays at work, and I've baked cakes for both. I need to preface this by saying, I am challenged in the baking department, but what I lack in skills, I make-up with a healthy since of adventure, guile, and the ability to google yummy cake recipes. I must admit, my first attempt at cake baking was a fake-a-bake (don't tell anyone). I found a yummy cake recipe, chocolate cake with raspberry filling and dark chocolate frosting, and took the semi-homemade approach to it- I bought boxed cake mix and frosting mix, and made my own raspberry filling. I don't think it was total cheating, since all boxed mixes are is measured out dry ingredients, I was just being efficient with my time and letting the store work for me...or at least that is what I keep telling myself. Despite, or rather because of, cheating the cake turned out well and was gobbled up by my co-workers. This initial success gave me the confidence I need to finally attempt to make a cake entirely from scratch, gasp!
For my first 100% homemade cake I found a scrumptious looking chocolate peanut butter cake on one of my favorite food blogs. Let me elaborate, this was a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and a chocolate peanut butter ganache, OMG! Could I have picked a more complicated cake for my first attempt!?! In my mind, the appeal of this cake was the chocolate peanut butter ganache, which you pour over the cake and allow to ooze down it, thereby hiding any frosting mistakes that were bound to occur. Armed with cake making suggestions courtesy of Momma, I was ready to bake! Despite its fancy pants name, this was actually a very easy cake to make. Once the cake layers we baked and cooled, they were brushed liberally with simple syrup and layered with the very yummy peanut butter cream cheese frosting- I know it sounds nasty, but cream cheese and peanut butter actually worked well together, who knew? Once the cake was stacked, and slightly resembling the Leaning Tower of Pisa, I suffered through application of the crumb coat of frosting, a thin layer of frosting meant to trap crumbs on the surface, let it chill, and then put the final coat of frosting on that bad boy. After a final chilling, copious amounts of ganache was poured over the top, and I called it a day.
And how did it turn out? Perfection (if I do say so myself)!
