Spice Cake: the lost photos

Remember when I was so devastated by the disappearance of all my spice cake documentation from 77. Braised Short Ribs?

Well, I am devastated no more. I found the photos in an incorrectly named folder in my laptop.

I used the following tutorial from Whisk Kid to make my first foray into layer cake icing. It was extremely helpful and I don’t know what I would’ve done without it.

I began by using a large bread knife to level the cakes. 
Next, I applied the middle layer of frosting
There are cleaning supplies in all my food photos. Further proof of how counter space is at a premium in my humble abode.
Leveling the cakes in the first step gave me a nice flat, even surface to work with.
I first did a ‘crumb layer’ which is a thin coating of icing that acts as a base. It also gets rid of the majority of surface crumbs.
This is with the top layer of frosting. If you can see the plate in the back, that is where the ‘crumb’ icing would go. The key is to keep using fresh frosting as you go along. So as soon as crumbs appear you discard that icing and go for fresh. I had no idea that this was how you are supposed to ice a cake.
I tried to replicate the spice cake on #77, but I didn’t have gummy orange slices so I resorted to ginger snaps (which I know I bought for a previous dinner) and I had the pecans from the Ham & Pecan rolls.
I don’t own a cake plate or any such thing so I improvised by using a bowl has a lid.
Here it is, the finished spice cake. And a lot of crumbs. I think I was so tired at this point that I didn’t care about stray crumbs messing with my photo.
This is the Whisk Kid cake. No matter what I do I will never make anything this beautiful in my lifetime.

So that’s my spice cake. It doesn’t look at all like the result from the Whisk Kid instructions, but this was honestly my first try at frosting a cake that wasn’t in a brownie pan. So, all in all I think I’m pretty rad.

I don’t know what recipes are coming up in the Dinner is Served! cavalcade of cakes, but at least I am a bit more confident in my baking abilities. OK, scratch that, we all know that’s so not true. I feel more confident in my frosting abilities. There will be no stopping me.

And I have decided that since I put Ginger Snaps on the Spice Cake that makes it a Ginger Spice cake. And you know what that means.

Oh, yes indeed. I gotta bring the pain. You know you want it. You gotta have it.

But before you get it, I want to share with you that I’m the I website of the month over at Black Dogs which is totally awesome so you should pop on over and check it out. There’s an interesting story involving Rasputin’s penis and also some retro recipe cards from Good Housekeeping. Go explore.

So here it is. The Spice Girls Megamix. It’s like I’m back at Carnegie Mellon for my freshman year all over again! Oh, and congrats to Posh and Becks on the birth of their 4th child. Although the new baby’s name totally ripped off George Costanza and sounds vaguely like a brand of Japanese Cigarettes, Mild Seven, which also totally reminds me of college. Ah, good times.

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0 thoughts on “Spice Cake: the lost photos

  1. Miss Blog of the Month….how cool is that to be the ‘anything’ of the month…centerfold, blog, drink, celebrity….your mom is very impressed.

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