Cake baking lessons learned.

I learned two very interesting important lessons Tuesday night.

1. Don't bake cakes when the humidity is 95%.

2. Don't bake cakes with a seven year old helping you when it is 8:30 at night, and he should already be in bed.

Sigh. Four inedible cakes later..............

Let's start at the beginning. ("Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start." Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music - one of my favorite movies.)

Ruth and Abbe took a cake decorating class last night. They each needed one or two round cakes for the class. The girls were supposed to bake the cakes themselves but they were taking FOREVER to get their school work finished after their three day weekend.

I really wanted to get the cakes baked on Tuesday so that they would be easier to ice and work with on Wednesday. So, I stayed home to bake cakes while Jason took the kids to the library. The humidity in the house was atrocious. I did not have any cake mixes in the house because I have tried to quit buying such things. So, I had to bake cakes from scratch which really usually isn't any big deal.

But once I finished with the batter (I used yellow cake from Betty Crocker - usually a fail safe recipe.) I could tell something was different but really didn't think about it too much. The cakes really didn't bake well. They were not light but WAAYYY to moist and ..... weird.

Sooooooo, enter cake batch #2.

When I say I am going to bake another batch, Eian begs me to help. Fine. Whatever. Bake with the kids all the time. No problem, thinks Mama. Huh. We added a little more flour because I thought the humidity caused the first batch to turn out strange. Also, since I was in a hurry, I didn't realize that we forgot to put the butter and Crisco in until I had the cakes already in the oven and I was cleaning up. Sigh.

CAKE FAIL #2.

The second batch felt like cornbread but more firm when I put a toothpick in to check if they were done baking.

Ruth and Abbe decided to take all four cakes anyway. They made their Pumpkin Cakes at the class on the ones Eian and I totally screwed up.

Then tonight, Eian, Ruth, and Abbe made 'birthday' cakes for Sarafina and Splotch. Ruth and Eian made Splotch's and Abbe made Sarafina's.

It's been a long week.

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Side Notes:

1. I have not been sleeping well due to having very strange dreams every night. And I remember them in the morning. The kids have gotten a kick out of hearing about them. Strange, strange dreams.

2. I wish I would have watched the Vuelta yesterday. Alberto Contador kicked everyone's butt from what I hear. Tried to watch the replay today but kept having to help with school work. Did watch the end of today's stage - was a really cool sprint finish.

3. Watching Project Runway while writing this. Love, love, love this show. Abbe likes to watch is too. I spend the whole time telling her, "That is not appropriate language." "You shouldn't treat people like that." etc. She just keeps saying, "I know Momma" in her disgusted 10 year old voice.

4. Sarafina is prowling around like the mad hunter that she is. Just a few minutes age she found the grasshopper that Eian accidentally let loose in the house after school. He kept telling me that he thought Smokey ate it. I think he was saying that so he could quit looking for it. I kept saying, "I don't want 40 million grasshopper babies in the house! You need to find that thing!" The poor grasshopper must have been trying to make a mad dash to the front door, not realizing that we have a tiger in the house!