Joker of Cakes

It all began last week -- the day I wanted to eat my words. I said to Ryan, "For your birthday I will make you any cake you want! The options are limitless!"

I should've known better. Ryan is always up for challenge. My original thoughts that his request would be something benign like chocolate cake, vanilla or marble cake, maybe ever carrot cake.

He got a big grin on his face, and said "I would like  an Ice cream cake."

Simple enough, right? Oh no. This was different than the ice cream cake I've always known.

I could just see the excitement building in his eyes. And he then goes on....:

 "Not just any ice cream cake. I want the cake part to be white. No, I take that back - I want it to be marble. Not yellow and chocolate. White and chocolate. Then I went the ice cream to be............cookies & cream. Oo! And then garnished with hot fudge."

I took the challenge head-on. I thought, "Hey I can do this!"

Then he goes on, "Oh, and the frosting? I want it to be orange. That way you have to figure out how to mix the colors."  (Jokingly, obviously. Anyone can figure out their primary colors to make orange....)

So I consulted my Betty Crocker cookbook, I consulted allrecipes.com, I consulted my trusty Mom. And formed a "Plan of Attack". For, let's just clarify - I don't do well with desserts. I'm more of a bread-baking, meat-marinating, side-dish cookin' kind-of-gal.

The instructions seemed.....fricking impossible challenging. But, I tried. And here is how it played out:

• So 1st step came baking the cake. I did a 9 x 13 inch Marble Cake. It filled the house with glorious smells, and looked wonderful! Hurray! I'm a pro.
• Let cool overnight. (all is well, still. I woke up in the morning, and the cake was cool. Still a pro)
• Cut 9 x 13 cake in half. (Score!)
• Remove cakes from pan.
• ..........................
• This is easier said than done, in my world of baking. They weren't neccessarily stuck, they just didn't want to come out.
• So I flipped it upside down on my board.
• Nothing.
• So I shook it a little.
• Still nothing.
• I proceeded to flip it over, shake it, beat it with my hands, pound the hell out of the cake.
• Still nothing.
• So, I got out multiple knives, spatulas, etc and decided to pry it out.
• Cake came out, but.......had some crumbles. (No biggy! Frosting=glue)
• Now time to make the frosting. I made a "White Mountain Frosting" so it had the peaks and was very soft and wonderful. I even used a candy thermometer (My 1st time ever) It turned out wonderful.
• Now, it was time to make it orange.............
• I read the package instructions.....I figured out I didn't have normal food coloring. It was neon.
• I read "8 drops pink, 3 drops green"
• So I proceeded.
• However, orange was not the color I was seeing. So I added more pink and more green.
• It just kept getting darker and more vibrant of this god-awful pinkish, orangish, flesh-ish color.
• So I looked at the directions again.
• Oops! I was using purple and green, not pink and green.
• So I started adding pink.
• It only got worse - Ryan's Frosting is Human-Flesh Colored. Nice.
• Well, the damage had been done. And there's no way I was starting over again.
• I proceeded to frost the cake a nice "fleshy" color.
• Then it was time to do the ice cream layer. I scooped on the ice-cream, and it layed out quite nice.
• Now it was time for Layer # 2 of the cake.
• This was difficult, and took me a long time.
• By the time I got the cake on top of the ice-cream; must icecream had melted.
• So I popped it in the freezer. Came back to check in an hour and....
• Ice cream refroze and expanded everywhere!!! Ice cream was eating my ugly fleshy cake.
• I cut off the excess, and made it look managable pretty. All will be...manageable

Now lets take you to Wednesday night, time to light the candles and for me to solely sing Happy Birthday to Ryan. (poor guy....)

We decided to just do one candle (kind of like people choose to do when they get old and gray and have so many candles it may be a fire hazard.......) I didn't want the ice cream to melt.

And here is the finished product (brace yourselves, folks)

I let Ryan do the honors of cutting into the cake. I was expecting to see 3 gorgeous layers - perfectly froze out.

And we come to find........

No ice cream?!!?!

Yep, apparently when it melted out, I cut it off - and the other remainder of ice cream melted into the cake layers.

It was like a magic trick. I made a layer of cake disappear!

In the end, it tasted really good. The cake was nice and moist and did have an ice-cream flavor to it! And the fleshy frosting tasted wonderful.

Let's just say.....Ace of Cakes won't be recruiting me anytime soon. And I don't think Ryan will ever request soemthing "outside the norm" for a birthday cake again!