My Guy of the Moment's birthday is coming up and, as with all of my guys, I intend to bake for his birthday.
He's got a major sweet tooth and I thought something sugary and fruity would go over well. Needing to build confidence in my skills I chose to do a test run before committing to a recipe.
Where I would chose a Strawberry Cake for a girl, I decided on an orange cake.
Unfortunately I haven't seen Orange Cake mix in a long time, yes I plan on using a box, he's not that special yet! So I took a box of lemon cake mix and a box of orange jello.
According to my sister, orange drink mix gets too tangy and anything else would make the batter too soupy. However I did pick up an orange soda to use instead of water, for more flavor.
I whipped together the ingredients and set the cake up in a loaf pan, easy to cut, easy to store. At 350F I thought I could set it and forget it. But 30mins went by and I couldn't smell the orange batter cooking. This isn't unusual in my small apartment kitchen, but the batter was so fragrant that the lack of smell started to concern me. I opened the door and checked the center to see if it was done. Something I always do in case the batter rose too fast or burnt on the bottom. The center of the cake was still liquid but the outsides were cooked through. I turned down the oven hoping the outsides wouldn't burn while the insides cook.
Then the disagreements with the recipient of the cake started. Over what, I'm not sure, but it cause several things to happen. I began to do the dishes while still cooking and I almost scorched the Sprouts, my asparagus had too much balsamic on them and when I opened the oven, the center of the cake had imploded.
No bother, I thought, I'm covering it in Icing anyway. I set the cake out to cool while we at and turned it over on a cutting board to cool further, then mixed the icing.
His favorite color is blue, so I got Blue Raspberry Lemonade Powdered drink mix and poured half the packet into a jumbo container of whipped vanilla icing. I thought the whipped would be better that plain Icing, make it look like a fluffy blue cloud.
As soon as I stuck the chopstick in to stir evenly, the icing deflated. In truth it was very warm in my apartment and the humidity in the air probably caused it to lose shape. I tasted the concoction, now slightly blue, but it wasn't raspberry/lemony enough, so I added more. Plus 4 drops of blue food coloring. After achieving the correct blue I lathered it on the cake. And it began to slide. Again, too warm, too humid, but too late to stop now.
I let the icing slide down the cake into a ocean blue mountain of kool-aide flavored mess and asked, do you want a piece?
After dusting the top with what was left of the drink mix I cut a slice. Even though it didn't look pretty, as it continued to sink deeper into the cutting board, the color contrast was very pretty.
Needless to say after taking several samples, I have concluded that the Icing is too sweet.
I should use a white chocolate, buttercream or cream cheese next time to hold up to the tangy-sweet if the mix. Then the cake, although a bit slumpy, is moist. It doesn't hold together well on a fork, but it would make a good edition to a parfait with sherbet or ice cream. Or maybe the topping for yogurt and fruit.
It will be eaten, sans some of the gewyness.
Pictures to come.
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