Cake Insanity

*WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD*

Yesterday was crazy enough, but today was beyond normal amounts of epicness. The plan was to make two cakes for two sisters that drive us around a lot as a thank you gift for their time and gas spent (especially since where campus normally meets is about 30-45 minutes away each trip!). One's favorite cake/frosting combo was chocolate (and a few other options but I chose chocolate lol) and chocolate, while the other one's favorite was strawberry (and I assumed vanilla frosting). +/-

Never having done a chocolate cake from scratch before, I happily looked online for a choco cake recipe. Finding one, I go through the ingredients and think "Huh, I have everything they list. This is unusual, normally I'm missing somethin-" and I see BAKING SODA listed. Boom, don't have that. And it's kinda important, too. And my mom took me shopping last night, so I could have gotten more then. And my dad was sick, so I couldn't really ask him to drive me anywhere. Frantic, I look online for substitutes for baking soda. Some sources say there is no substitute, others say it's possible but not really worth it, and some say it's fine to substitute baking powder. 3 times as much. The research ended up being a good chemistry lesson, though, as baking powder apparently either has some baking soda in it or something that does a similar thing to it in the powder along with cream of tartar and something else. Wikipedia and Google would be more helpful for info on that lol. Anyway, I chose to take the risk and do the baking powder substitute, knowing that it could potentially mess up the entire cake if it doesn't work. Side note, that was some of the thinnest cake batter I've ever made. The recipe said it would be thin, but you can see how thin it was from the spatula (kinda):

Then the cakes went into the oven. This is where things started getting weird. First off, I used these cute little ~6 inch cake pans that my mom has, so the cake batter distribution was a bit different and the times were probably going to be different. Second, I guess I overfilled the pans. The cakes were baking fairly normally (so I thought) at first: the sides were rising, the top was starting to dry out a bit showing that it's cooking. Then, the center started to do this weird bubbling thing. It looked ugly (and kinda creepy) on the cake, but then the bubbling effect baked into the center XD. "I'll just cut it off," I thought. So then I notice how high the cake is baking. I don't know if it had to do with the extra baking powder, overfilling, both or something else, but it started to freak me out some as I didn't want the cake to overflow onto the heating element and burn/catch fire or anything. Watching the cake a little while longer, it seemed to stabilize and (supposedly) cook through more to where it looked like it wouldn't rise anymore, so I calmed down a bit. At about 12 minutes left (the first round, explained later), I saw the top rise over the lip a bit and I started running around frantically looking for something to put the cake pans on top of so they wouldn't overflow. Overflow was imminent. Thankfully, God blessed me with a cookie sheet that we have that's big enough to house the cakes but light colored so the cakes won't cook more on the bottom (from a dark pan). I opened the oven and go to move the (supposedly) almost done cakes, but the tops were actually sloshing back and forth as though on top of an ocean wave! Quickly and carefully, with the new hazard of the cake batter still being very loose yet ready to bubble over, the cake pans got safely onto the cookie sheet. The cake on the left just bubbled over at that time and a little got on the oven door, but that was okay since that could just bake off. I put the rebellious cakes back in the oven to cook some more, hoping that their undoneness was just some joke or weird baking phase and that they would be normal cakes when it was time for them to come out.

Here you can see the glob of overflow on the left cake. That one gave me so many problems DX. These were anything but normal cakes. By the time they came out after the suggested 30-35 minutes, they were still soupy with a semi cooked top! So I had to put them back in the oven for another 20 or so minutes. During this time (or earlier, I forgot lol), the left cake started acting up again and it's little blob friend started to creep toward the edge of the cookie sheet to overflow too! So I had to scrape him and move him toward the middle as well as move the offending cake more towards the center of the cookie sheet. This whole time, the right cake was just chilling there. Being a good cake. Left cake, why can't you be like your brother??? Anyway, after the cakes decided to actually bake somewhat correctly, it was time for them to come out and cool. By that time, I started the strawberry cake recipe. That one acted like it was supposed to. And it...didn't require baking soda. That was such a relief, haha. They behaved very well in the oven, like good little cakes should:

While these were baking (properly), I took the two little monsters out of their pans. They came out okay, but most of the sides were jagged!

The strawberry cakes, on the other hand, came out nicely:

Except one thing: they didn't taste that much like strawberries! I tried a recipe that calls for fresh strawberries, but all we had was a HUGE bag of frozen ones, so I just went frozen and used them. I even put a little more than what the recipe called for in there. Don't really know what happened; frozen strawberries shouldn't make that much of a difference but amen, it came out nicer than the other two cakes XD. After finishing the cakes, I started the usual frosting process. The first cake got chocolate frosting with some cream cheese mixed in for richness. The sides of the chocolate cake were dry, which really freaked me out and made me contemplate whether I should even continue with them or just wait until I could do the entire recipe properly with baking soda. But after cutting the dome off of the cake and realizing that the rest of it was moist, I went for it.

With the dome cut off and some frosting to spare, I put some frosting on the dome and tasted the whole thing. For a cake that got pretty messed up, it tasted pretty good! And the cake was kinda odd but still good. It didn't really taste that much like a cake, it tasted (and felt) more like a giant brownie! There's nothing wrong with that haha. So before I started baking (about a week or so ago), I asked the two sisters what their favorite cake combos were, but also what their favorite tv show/movie was so I could customize the cakes accordingly. I've always wanted to do modelling from fondant, marzipan, etc but a) never really learned how to sculpt (you see proof a bit further down) and b) didn't have the time or money to experiment with stuff like that. After some digging, I found out about this thing called candy clay. It literally is the consistency of clay, which works well for more complicated or intricate figures. And it was really easy to make, too. It's just candy melts (or almond bark or chocolate or...just use your imagination or Google) and light corn syrup. Be sure to follow a recipe, though, or else your clay will go wonky.

Here is it after sitting out to stiffen up overnight. The first sister likes the TV show called Bones, so I modeled a small skull to go on top of the cake and used some more of the clay for the lettering. I didn't realize how much the candy clay would soften in your hands after working with it for a while. It was almost unusable at one point! Plus, I was trying to copy the show's lettering, but because of my lack of experience with candy clay, as well as clay in general, the letters are the way they are in the picture. And I didn't ration the cake real estate out enough, so the "s" unfortunately had to be pasted above the rest of the letters. I should have made an insertion symbol like they use in papers for it lol. And when making the skull, I had this really cool looking reference picture. I was like "Yeah! It's going to look just like that in 3D!" No. Just no:

It looks like a Halloween candy, not a realistic skull lol.

Now, that one's done. For the other cake, I realized how much strawberry flavor it was lacking, so I made a filling thingy out of strawberry jelly that someone made and melted some more frozen strawberries in it. Hopefully it helped the cake out some:

It went in between the cakes to help them out some:

And the frosting was just regular vanilla frosting. After all this cake has went through flavor wise, I was too afraid to mess with it!

Frosting the cake wasn't that bad. The jelly filling kept making it move around though o_O.

And the second sister's favorite movie was The Emperor's New Groove, so I thought it would be a good idea to model Kuzco as a llama. Plus I like llamas. Sculpting skills are pro level here:

Close enough. And the two cakes together:

After all that hassle, I had to transfer them to the cake carrier. With two spatulas (they were stiff, not the baking spatulas). That tore up the bottom of the cake. Then my mom and I talked and she offered to buy better sized cake boxes. So, more transporting, spatulas and tearing up the bottom of the cake lol. But they made it there, along with those mini cupcakes. The two sisters were very encouraged by their cakes and the minis were a hit, the last my mom saw them, there were three left o_o. I had to omit about 16 upon transport because they wouldn't all fit though, but it was great that they were good, despite the anguish and chaos they caused. I think I'm taking a break from baking for a day or two. I might cry if I have to taste another frosting soon. Thanks for reading!