Adventures in Birthday Cake

Asmi's birthday was around the corner. And she loves pink. And so do I. So I wanted to make the most OBNOXIOUS PINK SPARKLY GLITTERY GIRLY pink cake I could find. I searched far and wide for anything glittery hot fuchsia magenta sparkly pink. Poor me. The only caveat: Asmi doesn't eat eggs. So I had to find a good recipe that was also good egg-free.

Something like this but only PINKER. Something like this but only HEART SHAPED.

My genius plan was to take the recipe from the family spice blog and adapt to be Asmi (and Lavina) friendly. So I preheated my oven to 350 degrees. I applied non-stick spray to my 9" heart-shaped pan. I used my mixer to mix 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of butter

I pureed 3/4 cup of frozen strawberries

In another large bowl, I whisked 1 1/2 cup of cake flour, roughly 2 tsp. of baking powder, and 1/4 tsp. of salt

Now came for my ingenious substitution. Since we know from Martha Stewart that you can mix vinegar and baking soda to make an "egg substitution" I decided to follow the pink lady cake recipe but only with baking soda and vinegar. (note that the original recipe calls for 8 egg whites, 2/3 cups milk and red food coloring at this stage).

Well, this is why I'm not a dentist. I forgot basic chemistry of how I should mix dry ingredients first and then move to wet ingredients. So basically something went on chemistry wise and RUINED EVERYTHING (in short, non-descriptive terms).

There are no photos of the end result for various reasons.

So recipe #1 was a fail on Jyoti's end.

Then I had the genius idea to try the same Martha Stewart Recipe I used for Lavina's birthday cupcakes, only omit the dutch processed cocoa and add red food coloring so the cake would be pink.

This time I had fresh strawberries so I used these instead...

And, the final result....

It was very spongey and not very cake tasting...Epic Fail #2.

Then, I decided to stick to the tried and true "gluten free" recipe from Martha Stewart (see the entry about Lavina's b-day cupcakes). In the heart shaped tin. Okay, so the cake was chocolate. Now I had to make up for the extra pinkiness SOMEWHERE!

FROSTING!

A whole lot of sugar and butter = yummy goodness. PINK yummy goodness that is!

My make-shift frosting bag...

Me attempting to frost a cake

VOILA!

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting (courtesy of something I found on all recipes):

3 cups confectioners sugar

1 cup butter

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1-2 tbsp. whipping cream

red food coloring (if you are going for the pink look)

A hot pink glittery mess of yum town fun