Happy Birthday Katie!

Last week was my friend Katie's birthday, clearly this event couldn't come and go without making here a cake. Now here's the catch, Katie's favorite is yellow cake with chocolate frosting. The classic. Well I don't know if you've ever tried trying to find a recipe for yellow cake but there basically isn't. Yellow cake happens to be Christopher's favorite too so I made him a yellow cake from scratch a while back. The recipe came from Alton Brown, and was one of the only ones I could find in books or online. It was just okay, it wasn't the classic out of the box simple yellow cake that so many love and adore. It just can't be replicated. As much as I hate to do it, I had to. I used the box cake mix. Of course I didn't admit at to the people eating it I did such a thing. If they take the time to read my blog then they deserve to know, but if they don't then they will continue to be fooled and miss out and the beauty and craft that is my blog. So yes, box cake bleh. To be a bit less obvious I used 2 cake mixes and split them up among 3 9in. pans. They came out just beautiful. Now for the real treat: my favorite Chocolate Frosting Recipe. I've made it twice now and I don't think I'll try any other chocolate frosting recipe again. It's just perfect and I will forever claim it as my own. This recipe comes to us from the Hershey's chocolate website.
ESPECIALLY DARK CHOCOLATE FROSTING
Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine
2/3 cup HERSHEY'S SPECIAL DARK Cocoa
3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
Melt butter, Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency. Add small amount additional milk, if needed. Stir in vanilla. About 2 cups frosting.
Both times I've made this frosting I've doubled the recipe. Two cups just isn't enough for a 3 layer cake and I like to have extra for snacking while decorating. I used my decorating with white chocolate trick again. It's soooo much easier to write out things in chocolate on wax paper than using frosting directly on the cake. It saves on having to scrape off frosting and start over if mistakes are made. Just pop it in the freezer peel off the wax paper and set the chocolate writing on top of the cake. I also made some chocolate polka dots with the leftover chocolate to make it cute and girly. The cake was great!
No time to bake this weekend sadly. I have to spend all my time in the office answering phone calls. It may be some time before I get to bake again. Christopher and I leave for our cruise Monday the 24th with Kimberly and Jon! There will be tons and tons of photos and maybe Flip! will even make his blogging world comeback. Ya...remember good old Flip!? If you don't, Flip! is my mini video camera; he's the best. I'm so excited!!