I baked my son’s birthday cake

I baked a cake for my older son’s birthday. It probably wasn’t the awesome super hero flashy cake to fulfill his preschool desires, but I was impressed.

I made it from scratch. Nothing but raw ingredients came out of boxes. I even used cake flour to give the cake extra smoothness.

Here’s where I folded in the melted unsweetened chocolate:

I slightly screwed up the recipe. At one point, I was supposed to alternate between adding dry and wet ingredients to the base mixture. I added all the dry ingredients before the wet, so I had a really dry, chunky mixture. I had to beat the wet stuff into it longer than I should have, but it came out fine.

The two cakes after baking:

Our oven is really old and doesn’t maintain temperatures well. A third of the way through the baking, I found the oven was 25 degrees too high. A quick temperature change and some oven venting saved the day.

My wife lighting the final product:

Yeah, the frosting wasn’t smooth:

I made it from scratch, and I made it correctly. I don’t know why it didn’t spread smoothly. Maybe it should have been warmer?

Here’s the inside:

Boy, was it delicious! Way better than box mix cake and partially hydrogenated frosting from the tub!

The birthday boy augmented his slide:

So maybe it wasn’t a superhero cake. But it had a superhero taste!