First of all, you must accept
that this lovely three layer cake you are about to make will look only vaguely
similar to the picture of the cake posted with the recipe. Once you accept that
fact, you may actually enjoy preparing this ridiculously NOT "Surprisingly
Easy" Cute Polka Dot Cake. The good news, however, is that no matter how
your cake turns out, it is likely to be quite tasty, albeit generally
unpleasing to the naked eye.
You must begin by determining
that you probably don't have all the bakeware needed for this task. This would include a hand held electric mixer
(if you already own one, it’s fairly certain you will not be able to locate the
metal mixer doodads that are expected to be attached to said hand held mixer in
order to use it properly, so you might just as well buy a new one); an array of
measuring cups and spoons; three 8-inch round cake pans; a silicone
cake-pop-maker thingy; an egg white separator; 3 wire racks; a cake platter; 8 identical
small plastic bowls and spoons; 4 plastic spatulas; a large mixing bowl; and
parchment paper. Once you've ordered all of these items online you are then
ready to sit back, relax, and wait for your delivery of these products. This
will generally take 3-4 business days, assuming any items, including the
unknown and unfamiliar silicone cake-pop-maker thingy are not on back order.
Once you receive your baking
products in the mail, you may begin the process of shopping for the necessary
ingredients. Basically you need a four pack of food coloring, two boxes of
white cake mix, eggs, vegetable oil, cooking oil spray, and four containers of
white frosting. You may choose to use
two containers of white frosting and a large container of whipped topping, such
as Cool Whip. This little tip provides a tasty little extra surprise for your
“Surprisingly Easy" Cute Polka Dot Cake.
So you assemble all of your bakeware
and ingredients on your kitchen counter, no doubt spread all around your
kitchen, as this is an astonishing number of necessary materials and most
average kitchens do not provide such counter space as is needed for your cake.
Nonetheless, I recommend that you do indeed have everything you need available,
as you will soon be doing 80 things at once and need to have the easiest access
to your cake making items.
You now begin the actual act of
making the “Surprisingly Easy" Cute Polka Dot Cake! The first thing you do
is look at the silicone cake-pop-maker thingy and wonder what in the world its
purpose is, how in the heck to use it, why did it come with two pieces and question
if it will possibly melt when placed in the oven. This process takes about an hour. There is
much discussion if there is more than one person in the kitchen. Once you’ve
determined that the smoke alarm in your home is indeed working, you turn on
your oven. If you’re unsure how to do this, here are my instructions. Please
place close attention here: There should be a dial on the top of the stove that
has numbers on it ranging from roughly 200 to 500. You will want to set this
dial to 350. Now go ahead and line up the 3 round cake pans and both parts of
the silicone cake-pop-maker thingy and grease up everything with your cooking
spray. Spray at random until you are satisfied that all of your cookware is
sufficiently dripping with oil so that your cake will hopefully come out of
said cookware in its proper form.
Now you must prepare your cake
batter. Open both boxes of the white cake mix. Please verify that you did not
accidentally purchase Angel Food white cake mix as this will not work at all
and further delay your preparation of your “Surprisingly Easy" Cute Polka
Dot Cake. Following the instructions on the back of the cake box, please now
begin the process of generating the cake batter. At this point, you will need
to do two very important things: figure out how to use the egg white separator,
and insert the metal stick doodads into the proper holes provided on the nether
regions of your mixer. You will not accomplish this on the first or 25th
try. One stick doodad will invariably stick out while the other will go in
properly. Unfortunately, at this point, I cannot advise you any further on how
to use these two products because I frankly don’t know how. But somehow,
eventually, after several hours or maybe even a day, I achieved the tasks of
separating the egg whites and inserting the metal stick mixey accouterments
into the handheld mixer. I simply am unable to explain in these instructions
how it happened, but it just did.
OKAY! Now you may combine the
ingredients needed to make the cake batter in the large mixing bowl. This is
getting very exciting, no? When you are ready to use your hand held mixer to mish-mash
the ingredients you put in the mixing bowl per the cake box instructions, you
simply stick the metal sticks in the bowl and turn on your mixer. At this
point, it is quite likely that nothing will happen. This is because you need to
plug in your mixer! No available plugs in your kitchen you say? Well find one
somewhere – surely you can locate a spare plug in your home – your bedroom
perhaps? Or more likely the bathroom since you use a number of electronic
products to style your hair each day? So take your mixing bowl full of unmixed
ingredients and your mixer to wherever you’ve finally located an available
plug, and begin the mixing process. Your metal mixey stick thingys begin to spin,
and the ingredients in the bowl begin to resemble a soupy, unappetizing pale
liquid. Once you have completed the mixing process per the number of minutes
recommended on your cake mix box, you may remove the hand held mixer with the metal
mixey thingy doodad sticks from the soupy substance. A helpful tip at this
point: turn off the mixer before you remove it from the mixing bowl. If you
fail to do this, your mixey sticks will spatter the soupy substance all over
your bathroom or bedroom or den or wherever you are trying to pull off this
particular task of making your, let’s say it together now: “Surprisingly
Easy" Cute Polka Dot Cake!
Alright. Now you must put the
mixing bowl of soupy pale muck in the refrigerator. (If you don’t know what
this domestic device is, look it up; I can’t hold your hand through every
single detail). Please retire to your
bedroom and take a much deserved nap. Or just go to bed for the night. You’ve
done enough for one day.
The next step in making your
“Surprisingly Easy" Cute Polka Dot Cake is to separate the cake batter
muck. Pour some of it in a measuring cup until you’ve reached the big number 2
on or close to the top of the cup. Your goal here is to split up your cake mix
soupy stuff so that you may use various portions of it in different ways. Once
you’ve acquired your separate two cups of batter, you then separate the two
cups of your batter evenly into four bowls! This is getting fun and very
interesting! My recommendation is that you pour approximately ½ cup batter into
each bowl. This should be about right, give or take a spoonful or three. Yay!
You now have four bowls of ashen pasty batter, PLUS the leftover batter that
you’ve now returned to the refrigerator. (Again, look it up if you need to).
This is indeed “Surprisingly Easy”! Now, drop at least half, but no more than
half, of the liquid in your tiny food coloring bottles into the 4 bowls of the
1/4th of the two cups of the two boxes of soupy stuff that came from
the mish-mashing task of yesteryear, when you did the metal mixey sticks thing.
Your result should be four bowls of different colored muck-stew. This is
assuming that you didn’t duplicate one of your colors, thus leaving one color
out. If you did make such an error, just stop what you’re doing right now and
walk away. Just simply walk away. Hire a HazMat cleaning crew to remove all
signs of this botched attempt at making the “Surprisingly Easy" Cute Polka
Dot Cake and forget it ever happened.
Ok moving on then! On to step 25! Use a spoon to drop 1/3 of each of the 4
bowls of the ½ cup of the two cups of the two boxes of soupy stuff into the
silicone cake-pop-maker thingy that you previously, who knows how many hours or
days ago, sprayed with cooking spray. Your result at this point should be a
silicone cake-pop-maker thingy filled with twelve filled pop cups of 3 each of
the 1/3 of each of the 4 bowls of the ½ cup of the two cups of the two boxes of
soupy stuff, hopefully in four different colors. Oh please let this be so. If
not, again, I must insist you stop what you’re doing and walk away. Just walk
away. I humbly apologize for failing you
in your desire to achieve an undertaking of this magnitude. If, however, you
feel you are ready to move on, please put the top part of the two part silicone
cake-pop-maker thingy thing on top of the bottom part of the two part silicone
cake-pop-maker thingy, covering up your lovely array of twelve colorful balls
of batter. You may now insert this fine creation into your oven, which is
presumably still set at 350 since I never told you to turn it off. After about
7-9 minutes, turn right around and take the silicone cake-pop-maker thingy out of the oven and take a moment to
marvel at the fact that this piece of plastic didn’t melt! Ok, now you must
take the top part off, reach out for your wire rack that hopefully is still
available somewhere in your kitchen and turn the bottom part upside down on top
of the rack, and if there is a Dessert God in Heaven, your 12 lovely little
colorful pop balls should pop right out! Hence the name silicone
cake-pop-maker.
Oh my gosh, I must now
reluctantly inform you that you must repeat this POP task two more times! But
first you must wash the silicone cake-pop-maker thingy, spray it with cooking
spray again, and do the same thing all over again with the remaining
delightfully colorful bowls of cake muck, and your goal here is to use up all
the muck in each bowl and end up with…. now stay with me here…. 9 pop cake
balls of each color, for a total of 36 pop cake balls! Allow the pop cake balls
to completely cool. Go have a glass of wine or take a nap or both; I don’t
really care what you do at this point. Amazingly simple isn’t it? And we’re just now getting
started!
Next, line your three 8 inch cake
pans with parchment paper. Then place 3 of each colored cake pop balls into one
of the three cake pans. Your result should be twelve cake pop balls, in four
different colors, in each of the three round cake pans. If this is not the case, I must recommend to
you again, just stop what you’re doing and walk away. Just walk away. Again,
just call the HazMat cleaning crew to remove all signs of this botched attempt
at making this “Surprisingly Easy" Cute Polka Dot Cake.
If, however, you are still with
me, let’s move along! Remove the remaining cake batter soupy pasty pallid muck
from the refrigerator. Spread the batter evenly over the 12 cake balls in the
three cake pans. Try very hard to put the same amount of pasty cake batter muck
in each cake pan because if you don’t, your 3-layer “Surprisingly Easy"
Cute Polka Dot Cake will just look foolish and you will come off as completely
harebrained in thinking you could make this damn cake.
Insert the three cake pans into
the oven, which is still set at 350, I presume, as I have not yet permitted you
to turn it off. Cook the cakes for 23-25 minutes. Remove the now cooked 3 cakes
from the oven and set each one on a wire rack somewhere in your kitchen to cool
for at least one hour. By the way, you may now turn off your oven. Now you may
think you have some free time here! Oh contraire, you do not! No nap for you! Now you must prepare your frosting for this
lovely “Surprisingly Easy" Cute Polka Dot Cake. Use your four remaining
small plastic bowls and divide your white frosting (and whipped topping if
desired) into four even portions. Once again, drip your four different food
coloring containers into each bowl, thus creating four different colors of
frosting, much like you did a few days ago when you made your four bowls of
colored cake batter to use in the ever famous, now understood, two part
silicone cake-pop-maker thingy. Turn to your cooled cakes and place one
completely cooled round cake layer onto your cake platter. Now here is where
you may stray from the norm and use your own artistic imagination. Using one
each of your four different spatulas for each bowl of colored frosting, begin
frosting the first layer of cake with one of the colors. Eventually, use all
four colors on this layer, both on top and the sides of the cake, and be as
creative as you’d like to fashion a lovely and lusciously tempting,
tasty-looking layer of cake. Next, put the second cake layer on top of the
first cake layer, being careful not to allow it to slide off and go askew, and
repeat the frosting process. Perhaps you
might try a different approach or design. The cake is your palette! (No pun
intended). Finally, do the same with the third layer of cake. And Viola! If all
has gone according to plan and proper paying attention to the detailed
instructions herewith set forth, your finished cake should look like this:
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