Cake Mania

A few weeks ago, Albertson's had a sale on cake mixes and frostings. (Other things too, but they have little or no significance to this particular blog.) So, I was standing happily in the baking isle looking at the various cakes and frostings. For many years, I have prided myself in baking entirely from scratch, but time has slowly gotten the better of me and speed is now of the essence. Otherwise, my poor family would never experience cake. I normally try to look for cake mixes that I know I would have great difficulty in scratching out on my own: Carrot Cake, Party Rainbow Chip, Lemon, Strawberry... but, I also end up getting the occasional Yellow, White and Chocolate for the possible cake emergency.

So, I was standing happily in the baking isle looking at the various cakes and frostings.. (deja vu anyone?) I was trying to remember how many cake mixes I had at home that were potentially frosting-less so that I could get enough for all my little cakey friends. I can't remember now what I concluded and ended up walking out of the store with, but it will potentially keep me in cake for the foreseeable future... or in other-words.. about 3 months.

I finally got up the energy to make cake this afternoon when Audrey went down for her nap. I took inventory of my cakes and frostings and found that I had miscalculated the amount of frosting I needed and ended up with much more than the mixes I have. Oh well! (More cake for meeee.. heeheehee!)


AAAAANYway. I was pondering my cake cravings and recalled something I read in an email about how you can make your store-bought frosting go further by whipping it in a mixer. (This only works with the non-whipped kind.) So, I thought, "Hey! What a great idea! Then I'll have the equivalent of twice the amount of frosting! HAHAHAHAHAHAH!" In order to use all the frosting, I theorized, I'd have to make two cakes. Two rectangular cakes in matching glass pans sounded a bit boring to me, so I ended up making 12 yellow cupcakes, a rather thin 8" round yellow cake (left-over batter from the cupcakes), and a nice, big 13x9 rectangular spice cake.

After the cakes cooled a bit, I rather hesitantly dumped my vanilla frosting into my Kitchen Aide mixer and turned it on the highest setting. Ben hovered nearby in interest. It didn't seem to do much to begin with and I was starting to worry that there was some key ingredient that I had forgotten and was necessary to fluff out the frosting. So, I went to the computer to search online. There is nothing on store-bought frosting except for the from-scratch-snobs who turned their nose up at the idea of anything like that. (This coming from an ex-snob.) While I was searching away, I hear a "Wow!" from Ben as my mixer suddenly seems to remember it's job and kicks into high gear. I went back over to find my batch of frosting had suddenly turned a whiter white and was now rather whippy looking! Hooray! It must have taken all of 3 to 5 minutes.


I had just enough frosting to top 10 cupcakes (two had muffin-top breakage and had to be forfeited down our gullets), the little 8" round and the entire spice cake. Not bad for a tub of frosting for $1.50! The other really awesome thing was that the frosting wasn't so heavy that it tore the cake up (a problem I have had in the past). All in all, it was a wonderful experience and I will now be eating cake for the next 3 or 4 days!