How to Make a Birthday Cake in 10 Easy Steps

I make a horrible house wife. 

I am terrible at cleaning and vacuuming in lingerie and mostly I suck at baking. But it was The Mad Scientist's birthday and I wanted to make a cake for him. So I rolled up my sleeves, mentally prepared the cat and bought a LOT of butter.  So I'm proud to present... 

How to make a 4 layer white cake with red velvet heart-shaped core and red velvet crumble top with royal icing in 10 easy steps or your money back! 

1. Bake 4 round cakes. Remember oven mitts. (Fire hot. Indeed.) 

2. Take a can of icing, use like glue to stick two layers together. Don't use real glue. You should have 2 two layered circles of glue-free cake. Bake two round red velvet cakes. Crumble one once cool. Eat the other one with one hand like it were a fluffy red frisbee.

 

3. Start carving. (The cake, not a shive... That comes later.) Carve a cone into the center of one (concave), then dig a little pyrimid into the other(convex). Yeah, just look at the photo.   

Concave and convex, bitches.

4. Run out of icing. Decide you are awesome enough to make icing from scratch. Coat the kitchen in a delicate layer of powdered sugar. Make 'snow' angels on the kitchen floor. Fill in caves with crumbled red cake.

Fun fancy mixer.

5. Stack cakes precariously. Lapse into diabetic coma from all the icing testing. 

6. Briefly reevaluate your life choices.

7. Realize that you've come too far and ice the entire cake. Add remaining crumbled cake on top. Try not to think about how it kind of looks like ground beef.

8. Add candle.

9. Sing "Happy Birthday" to my dear sweet husband. (Remember to send AOL Time Warner royalty check tomorrow.)

10. Burn the kitchen to ashes since there's no going back after the horrible mess you made.

Nothing says 'love' like a blood red core to your cake.

Quick! Ice! no wait... butter? Crap, just google it.

I burnt the living hell out of my hand.

Ok, so I'm being a bit dramatic. But burns hurt, even if they are small.

I was stupid and left the oven on after I was done using it and plum forgot all about it! Good golly gosh I am so much like my mother sometimes.

Turns out, if you leave the oven on for four hours, the outside gets just as hot as the inside. (or at least it does when you have a coco brown, 1960 Electric Living oven... it doesn't even have self cleaning! I digress.)

So a note from Auntie Pix, even if you never use it, get a damned first aid kit. After finally sticking my blistering flesh in cold running water, I realized how unprepared I was for things like this. I live alone and if I had a serious accident I'd be mopping up my wound with dirty kitchen towels...

Go to Amazon right now and get one for $40. Cause when your leaned up against the sink with tears in your eyes, your skin bubbling up, all alone, you are going to want something to ease the pain. Believe me.

Oh, and get a big sign to hang in the kitchen that says, "Turn off the oven. You may not be Martha Stewart but if you can avoid burning yourself or the house down, you get a gold star." I'll have the mock up for my new sign soon.