The Batman Cake

I had to call the police on my upstairs neighbor the night I decorated this cake. Pissed me off. Imagine trying to decorate a two tier cake for a precocious four year old to the muffled thumping of heavy-bass dance music and screeching girls. It's okay that you didn't invite me to the party, I'd rather listen to it from downstairs while I grind my teeth to nubbins.

Whatever. It was Brady's fourth birthday and he requested a Batman cake, complete with Batman, the Joker and a "Batman-bile" (pronounced "beel", not like "a bitter, alkaline, yellow or greenish liquid, secreted by the liver, that aids in absorption and digestion, especially of fats"). 

Super Auntie to the rescue! I sculpted a Batmobile out of modeling chocolate and baked a vanilla sponge cake with a marshmallow creme filling. No real calamities, it just looked really cool.

You may notice the pictures are taken at an "artistic" angle. This is because it was slightly tilting. Whoops. 

The Baby Bump Cake That Almost Wasn't

My sister had her baby shower on the May long weekend, and I was in charge of providing the treats. I made chiffon cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, which were delicious. I also told Tynna I would make her a baby bump cake. I have never made one, and had no idea how. Trusty Google provided me with some tips and tricks. I whipped up a Hellman's chocolate cake (my new go-to recipe. Mr. Town used to make it for us all the time, with hot fudge frosting and it's amaaaaazing) and poured it into a Pyrex bowl and my trusty cake pan that I use to make boobs. How odd that this is something I now do regularly.

The cakes baked fine, but the one that was supposed to be the belly seemed kind of wonky. I stared at these lumps of cakes and for the life of me could not figure out how I was supposed to make this into a baby bump cake. Also, I was dreading having to work with fondant to decorate it. I hate fondant, it tastes like chewy garbage. (I'll spare you my fondant rant, maybe I'll tell you some other time). I called my mom and told her that I didn't think I could make the cake, that it was really stressing me out. She said not to worry about it, that there would be plenty of food and my cupcakes would be just fine.

I stressed and stressed all night. The last thing I wanted to do was upset a very pregnant woman and let her know that her dream baby bump cake was not going to happen. I had bad dreams all night. Seriously.

The next day I took the cakes out of the fridge, and it was like looking at them with brand new eyes. Ohhhhh, I get it.

It looked like this:

Key Lime Pie-tastrophe (Or The Key Lime Pie That Almost Wasn't)

I have not written in awhile, for three reasons. The main reason is I'm unbelievably lazy. Secondly, I don't have a camera and blogs are a snoozer if there are no pictures to accompany the posts. Third, I've become a little less useless in the kitchen (mostly in part to forcing myself to be more organized and plan things out ahead of time), and as such have had less calamities.

That being said, allow me to tell you the tale of the Key Lime Pie That Almost Wasn't..

Picture it, Father's Day 2011. The first time in many many years that Mr. Town was here to celebrate it with us. I thought to myself "What a great opportunity to show him what a wonderful father he has been to us and bake him a Key Lime pie" (it's his favourite).

Now that I am organized, I made sure I had all my ingredients at the ready. Also, I knew I would be pressed for time, so I prepared my graham cracker crust ahead of time, and had it covered in the fridge and ready to go. A few days before Father's Day, I started to prepare the pie. I've never made one before but I figured it would be easy, which it was. Or would have been.

The first thing that happened was Chris knocked the pie plate out of the fridge, not only destroying my pre-prepared crust (it was so crumbly and perfect and buttery too, what a terrible loss) but also smashing my good Pyrex plate to smithereens. ARGHHH!!! I tried to put it behind me and bought a pre-made crust from Wal-Mart. Ugh, gross.

The next thing that happened was after spending ages squeezing, straining and zesting about 25 teeny tiny Key Limes, I realized I had no condensed milk. Crap! I could have sworn I had a can left over from Christmas! I bought some before work the next day and left it in my car, with a plan to really quickly slap this pie together, since my carefully laid plans had gone down the pooper.

I got home from work at 9:30 (yes, that's PM), and got down to it. I went to open the can of milk, which promptly exploded. Turns out it's not a good idea to leave it in the car all day when it's hot out. I ran it over to the sink so inspect the damage. Only half the contents remained. Frrrriiiigggggg. Of course that would happen. I didn't know what to do, I needed to have this pie ready that night, I had to work the next day and was going to my sister's for dinner right after work. Chris was leaving for work shortly and I couldn`t go out to get more.

I ransacked my cupboards, praying that there was something in there that I could substitute for sweetened condensed milk. Cans and cans of evaporated milk, but no condensed. And then, in the way back, there it was. That elusive can off milk that I had sworn I had left over from Christmas.

Of course.

Had I taken the extra two seconds the night before to look, none of this would ever have happened. On the plus side at least I had a story to tell.

The pie came together nicely after that. Mr. Town said it was as good as any Key Lime pie he`s had on any cruise ship, which made me feel quite proud. After all the disasters, near misses and broken Pyrex plates, I made my first Key Lime pie.

And if I didn`t keep dropping my cameras and breaking them, I would have a picture to show you.