Baking Improv

:D

One day, I just felt like baking a cake. 

So I went to the store and bought some cake mix and icing.  The white icing is just the regular king you scoop out, but the red icing is in one of those bottles that comes with the four different tips and you use it like the whipped cream cans.  

I started mixing everything together and then realized that I didn't have any circle pans.  All I had was a rectangle pan.  (I also have a heart shaped pan, but it was full of spaghetti pie at the time.)  So I just baked it in the rectangle pan.

I really didn't want it to just be a one layer rectangle cake, though. So when it was done and had cooled down, I cut it in half.

I stacked the two halves on top of each other and just iced it like a regular two layer cake.  I had to use a lot of icing (not complaining) on the sides that were cut so little chocolate cake crumbs wouldn't get all mixed in with the white icing.

This cake was oddly shaped because of there being two rounded corners on one side, and then two sharper corners on the other side.  But it was still yummy.

After a thing layer of icing, I piped on little red and white stars around the sides.  I'm not sure what I did to the top, I just started playing around with the icing.  I don't know if I like the red icing, though.  I mean, it tasted good, but it was harder to control how much icing came out of the can so it was a little harder to make designs with it. 

But I still like how it turned out.  So did my roommates. (:

Valentine's Day Cupcakes!

Yesterday my roommate and I had some friends over to our dorm room to watch the Super Bowl! We had lots of snack foods and I knew I wanted to bake something.  Saturday my mom and I were at Walmart and they had Valentine's Day cake mixes for a dollar!

So I got one. (:

I was excited to make these cupcakes for 3 reasons. 

1.  They're FUNFETTI!  And I've never made that kind before, which is weird because I love funfetti cakes. 

2.  I was also excited because my mom gave me her electric mixer!  I was all ready to start mixing everything together when I opened the box, and there weren't any beaters!!  Sigh.  But it was funny because that's exactly something my mom and I would do.  So I just wisked away like usual.

Then I poured it into these paper liners that I always forget I have.  I like them because they're cute pastel/Easter colors.

3.  I went shopping Saturday and there is a new-ish store in the mall (back home) that has a lot of things that are on Modcloth.com (which I loooove.)  They had this cupcake kit that I have wanted for forever so I had to buy it.  And then I had to bake some cupcakes so I could use it.

I put pink icing on one side of the piping bag and white icing on the other side so it would come out swirled together.  The pink icing came with some Valentine's sprinkles!

I think these are the best cupcakes that I've ever made with this crappy oven.  They weren't as overbaked on the tops as they usually are!  I think it might have something to do with using paper liners, so I'm going to use those every time from now on. 

I put as many cupcakes as I could on a cookie sheet (just to put them on something when everyone came over) and there were three left over, which worked out perfectly!  One for me and each of my roommates!  I put the last three on a paper plate and put them in the fridge.  I'm glad I did because by the end of the night, the rest of the cupcakes were gone! :D