I now own a teenager... Part 1

At the beginning of January, thirteen years ago, I gave birth to The Princess...

I didn't name her that.  The in-laws did.  They didn't have to live with her.

ANYWAY, she really is a wonderful child, deserving of a homemade, from-scratch cake of her choice for this most auspicious occasion.  She said she wanted a red velvet cake, but since the color theme of the party was purple, she technically wanted a PURPLE velvet cake.  Wonderful!  I found a great recipe and off I went.

It started out easily enough.  Cake baking may be science to a certain extent, but it's certainly not rocket science, am I right?  Measure measure...

sift sift...

mix mix...

Not TOO much flour all over the place... I think I'm doing pretty well...

One of the more interesting things about this recipe is it uses a baking soda/vinegar mixture for leavening...

(LOOK!!  SCIENCE!!!)

You let it bubble for a few seconds, then fold it into the batter... oooooooo...

Into the cake pan it goes, and everything appears to be fine...

(after a bit of clean up)

TO THE OVEN WITH YOU!!

OOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo lookie!!

Okay well it's not exactly PURPLE velvet cake, so we start calling it burgundy velvet cake...

It comes out of the pan perfectly... SUCCESSSSSSS!!!!!!

Now on to layers two and three.  Repeat the above procedure... forget what the hell you're doing... lift beater out of bowl and inexplicably turn the mixer back on...

Clean up the batter that has flown ALL over the kitchen and continue...

I overfilled the top layer pan a little, so it's taller than it should be.  No worries... that's what serrated knives are for...

It also slides effortlessly out of it's pan...

Then we have the middle layer...

Uh oh...

Houston, we have a problem...

Still, no worries at this point.  I'm doing this a couple days before the party, anticipating there will be some minor setbacks.  When doing a large cake project, I've learned to schedule in time for do-overs.  I set the fail out on the table and call it samples.  The children approve.

I finally get all three layers successfully baked, and even have a few cupcakes to boot.  JOY!!!

Time to wrap everything up, put it in the fridge, and make the frosting tomorrow.  I sit down and refuse to move for the next 12 hours.

To be continued...

DUHDUH DUHHHHHHHHH..........