Icing job gone wrong - but still yummy!

We had a great night last night…full of laughter, yummy food and great company! Here's one of Pat's fav pics he took of the birthday girl:

As promised here is a picture of the finished cake…before I added the white icing:



Okie…you can see that it kinda looks like crap…even with the flowers in the background - te he he. I covered it with chocolate butter cream icing, however, I didn't make enough icing for a 3 layer cake (remember, I thought it was a two layer cake recipe…lol). Why didn't I just make some more you ask? Well, I had run out of icing sugar and it was nearing dinner time - I was just DONE with it! To make matters worse the cakes peaked a bit when baked, so when I stacked them they required extra icing along the sides - and you can see from the picture, I didn't do a great job of disguising the deep crevices. What I probably should have done was trim off the tops to make them flat…but I didn't.

Because I was sooo not impressed with my icing skills I decided to cover it with white icing. I bought a Care Bear (my sister's name is Karen…we call her "care bear" on occasion ;) candle to top the cake, so I figured by icing it white it would look like a big cloud ;) So, on my lunch hour I bought a tub of Betty Crocker icing and went at it…but I BARELY had enough of that…and I was just icing the outside of the cake! I think they are skrinking those icing containers to make you buy the larger size! You can see in the pics where I went wrong ;)





And of just the cake:





It was a tasty cake…but I still need lots of practice - before this year I've ALWAYS made cakes using a boxed mix and they usually turned out really well…and nicely iced! But one of these days I will master the perfect chocolate cake!!!!

For funsies here is a picture of the whole gang last night. I've put a smiley face over Karen's Dad - he prefers to not have his pic on the web ;) LOL…I hope he likes his smiley!


PS My 24th birthday is tomorrow - whoot!