Thursday, March 29, 2007

Jonah's Birthday "Cake"

Ok they are cupcakes this time. For the past two years I have made a 2 layer cake for Jonah's birthday and they have cracked after I frosted them. Very frustrating. I did start a 2 layer for this one and guess what, it cracked too! I dumped the cake into a tuperware container (pretty hard) and started over. I refused to serve another cracked cake to our family. I should have gone with my first instinct and just done the cupcakes in the first place. It all turned out all right, but we had a time eating all that rejected cake (what a hardship!).
Jonah's into cars right now so Mater got to be the cake decoration.

4 comments:

Hollie said...

That turned out really good, and looks really tasty!

We love Mater too! Happy Birthday!

Audra said...

Hey- cupcake cakes are all the rage- so you are just keeping up with the trends! :o)

It turned out cute and cake is cake in my book!

Deb said...

Happy Birthday Jonah! Those cupcakes look so yummy!!

Audra said...

Hey- I talked to my mom (who made cakes professionally for years) about the cake cracking issue. She said if you are using a store bought cake mix and when you take it out of the oven and the cake is 'mounding'- then just take your pot holder and press down gently on the warm cake- to press down the mound. Once it is flattened quickly flip it over on to a cooling rack or plate. The weight of the cake won't allow the center to mound again and that should solve your cracking issues.

Some other pointers she gave are:

Check your cake 10 minutes before the box says it should be ready and use a toothpick to test the center. If it isn't ready (running dough comes out on the toothpick) the continue cooking for another five minutes. Once you test with a tooth pick and it comes out clean... its done. the box times are sometimes off depending if your oven runs hot or cold. If you over bake the cake - it tends to crack as well.

she also suggests using shortening and flour to grease the pan- tends to flip easier.

hope this helps!