a celebration cake.



Today I could still feel the excitement from last night lingering in the air. I know I am not alone in saying that it has been a tough eight years in this country. We have faced a terrorist attack, a long-lasting war, the deaths of thousands of Americans, countless lies, numerous attempts of pushing back our rights, and an economy in the gutter. But last night, hundreds of thousands of people watched and felt the same way I did: change is a'comin'. Sure, it may take some time, but there is an obvious sense of hope and faith in the air right now.

I felt that today was obviously a day for celebration, so I chose to celebrate the way that I know how: I baked a cake. Every Wednesday night, Alice and I get together for an evening of tea, internet browsing, heckling, and bad television, so I thought a celebratory cake would be a great addition to the evening. I don't know how many of you share this same opinion, but to Alice and my husband, Funfetti cake unleashes a sort of sweet nostalgia within them. I am much more of a deep-dark-chocolate not-too-sweet cake kind of a person, but I cannot deny the festive and comforting colorful nature of this cake. And so here it is, the perfect cake for a celebration, made (gasp!) mainly from a box.

Obama, baby, this one's for you.





Celebration Cake: idea from Betty Crocker

Ingredients:

1 box white cake mix
1 1/4 cups water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3 egg whites
1 bottle rainbow mix candy sprinkles
1 batch of vanilla buttercream (I used the very famous, very sweet recipe from Magnolia Bakery)
2 to 4 different colors decorating icing

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease bottoms only of 2 (8-inch or 9-inch) round cake pans with shortening or butter (do not spray with cooking spray). Dust with flour.

In large bowl, beat cake mix, water, oil and egg whites with electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds. Beat on medium speed 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Reserve 1 tablespoon candy sprinkles for decoration. Stir remaining sprinkles into batter. Pour into pans.

Bake 8-inch rounds 27 to 32 minutes, 9-inch rounds 23 to 28 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes. Run knife around sides of pans to loosen cakes; remove from pans to cooling racks. Cool completely, about 1 hour.

Place 1 cake layer, rounded side down, on serving plate. Spread 1/3 cup frosting over layer. Top with second layer, rounded side up. Frost side and top of cake with remaining frosting. Decorate top edge of cake with decorating icing in random squiggly pattern, overlapping colors. Sprinkle reserved candy sprinkles over top of cake.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Delicious Dried Plum Dessert for Autumn

Image
Two years ago in October everyone's favourite Parisian-American foodblogger, David Lebovitz , hosted a one-off Prune Blogging Thursday that resulted in a number of recipes using the humble wrinkled prune , aka dried plum. I submitted a recipe for healthy prune cake , which tasted much better than it looked. However, this time I've got a dried plum dessert recipe that both tastes good and looks good . The recipe is adapted from an Estonian cookbook " Kohupiima- ja kodujuusturaamat " (100 Rooga) and yields 6 small portions. I've garnished mine with sweet pomegranate seeds , but you can use lavender or lemon balm or simply dust the dessert with icing sugar. If you cannot find curd cheese (a popular ingredient here in Estonia), then ricotta or even cottage cheese (press through the sieve) would probably work as well. This would make a nice Christmas dessert - just in case you're already imagining the Christmas menu in your head :) Dried Plum and Curd Cheese Desse...
Read more

layered brownies.

Image
After the spice explosion of Thanksgiving (cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves, oh my!), all I could think about on Monday was something rich and chocolatey. Searching through my pantry, I was dissapointed to find nothing but a tiny bit of cocoa powder and some chocolate syrup. I was quite close to giving up and baking something else when I came across a recipe in an old christmas cookie magazine for brownies using chocolate syrup instead of regular melted chocolate. Hoorah! I was saved. The original recipe for these used a combination of chocolate and peppermint flavoring, but halfway through making them, I sadly found that I had no more mint extract. Instead, I mixed in some caramel extract into the cream mixture, which seemed to turn out just fine. I am sure a lot of different extracts and flavorings would work nicely: cherry extract, Kahlua, Amaretto, coconut flavoring, etcetera. Be on the lookout though. The spices will be back shortly. It's holiday time! Layered Brownies: recipe ...
Read more

Moist, moister, moistest: rhubarb muffins

Image
Photo updated in May 2009 We are still enjoying the rhubarb bounty . Here's a recipe for really moist rhubarb muffins that I made twice last week. Firstly, they were served at a 'girly' housewarming/ birthday party last Thursday, attended by all my aunties (that's three maternal and one paternal), my parents (my dad was unable to attend the 'real' birthday party on a previous weekend), as well as some of my first cousins (not all 11 though:). Instead of birthday cake , I made lots of these rhubarb muffins that day, served as a pyramid on a cake stand. Very pretty!! But in the midst of all the buzz and excitement, we forgot to take a picture. Not that it mattered much, as it gave me a good excuse to make these very same muffins again on Sunday. These muffins, let me tell you, are the moistest muffins you'll make. They're so moist, that even if you eat them on the following day, they taste like they're freshly baked. Delicious! Rhubarb muffins ( Rab...
Read more