You Want What?!?

Every year I bake my mother in law a birthday treat.  This is the firsts year that she's requested a certain kind of cake.  She wanted a lemon and chocolate cake.  Yeah, it doesn't sound that great to me either.  So I went off into pinterest land to find a lemon cake from scratch.

So this is what I did....

I used this chocolate cupcake recipe and this lemon cupcake recipe.  I made each cake in an 8" round.  And used the frosting recipe for the lemon cupcakes.  Then I whipped up some fudge frosting for a border and happy birthday on the top.

I started Friday.  I made my batters, baked the cakes, made the frostings, lemon zest and simple syrup while Jet napped.  I had to rewatch my Knife Skills class on craftsy.  This is where I love Chromecast.  I can put the class on the big tv in and either sew or cook.  I did the same thing yesterday when I was putting the layers together and frosting it.

Yesterday, I put them together.  I watched my Modern Buttercream class of craftsy.   It's definitely helping my baking skills.  Before I would have thrown some frosting in between the layers, slapped some frosting on and called it good.  But I took notes.  And I measured and leveled.  And it came out good.  The whipped cream frosting with lemon zest was hard to get smooth.

But in the end, she loved it.  We got to her house before she got home.  I immediately put it in the fridge so I could fix any frosting melting mishaps when it set back up for a while.  ( I hate the hour drive with melty/stay cold stuff.)  Well, it had one little place where the frosting ran a bit. I got it fix while she was pulling in.  She wouldn't let me put the lid on the cake carrier and dug in with a spoon.  HAHAHA!  She loved it.  Then we took the boys swimming.  And went out to dinner.  And the big kid stayed the night after Jet told her no.