Skull Cake

Sometimes you just need to know when to say, "Quit!"

I didn't think Phil would expect an actual birthday cake today - his real birthday - because we celebrated it with two cheesecakes on Sunday.  But I decided to try to "sneak" in a cake today - baking it after he left for work, before I had to leave for work myself. Kind of in a rush.

We only had one cake mix left.  Spice cake.  I don't think it's one of his favorites, but I thought it would just be faster if I used it than trying to come up with a "scratch" recipe really fast.  Still, I wanted it to be more than "just" a spice cake, so I added some grated carrots and walnuts to the mix.  I subbed 1/4 cup rum for part of the water.  It came out of the pans just fine... the layers even came out pretty even.  I had weighed the batter in the pans trying to make sure they'd come out close to even.

But, when I was "torte-ing" the layers, the edges of the cake cracked.  I was hoping that they would kind of "glue" back together with the filling.  But, the more I tried to salvage the cake (because too many crumbs were coming off in the icing - it was too stiff), the worse the situation became.

I decided to just leave it the way it is and call it "Quits!"

I then found myself trying to think of something to put on top of the cake... but I already called it "Quits!"

I wonder if it will even support candles.  Certainly not 65 of them!

The Good.  The Bad.  The Incredibly Bad... AND Ugly.

When Phil got home he said, "I love it!  It looks the way I feel!"  (He'll eat almost anything - except beef tongue.)  He thinks it looks like a skull.

MAN IMITATES CAKE

Things I tried this time:

1.  Making meringue buttercream icing with cream cheese.  Results:  At its thickest, I could pipe an edge around each layer to fill it with filling.  Thinned it to frost the cake.  Maybe it would have worked if the cake itself hadn't cracked and was more substantial.  I wouldn't do this again.  I think I'd invest in cheesecake flavoring (called an "emulsion") and just add it to regular meringue buttercream.  I didn't use the Wilton meringue buttercream recipe, either.  Next time, I think I'd better.

2.  Making pudding filling for the inside: One 3.4 oz. box of pudding mix in Cheesecake flavor.  Plus 3/4 C. milk.  Plus about 1 C. Cool Whip.  I think next time I will use a different recipe that I found that called for 1 C. milk + the whole 8 oz. container of Cool Whip.  I think that would make enough to fill between all four layers without having to make another batch.