Test Kitchen Thursday - Cake Debacle

Ah - cake!  Have you ever had a love/hate relationship with a particular food?  Cake is mine.  I love to eat cake, I love to mix up cake batter, I love to search for new cake recipes; however, somehow more often than not my cakes end up looking like this:

OK - this may be a bit of an exaggeration!  This was the lump that leaked out of my stand-up train pan.  The upside - at least I get to taste the cake to make sure it's OK ;)

And I somehow overfilled the cupcake liners and ended up with a mess.  I have learned 3/4 full does not equate the same across all cake batters.  Sigh!  I'll have to make a new batch of cupcakes tomorrow morning.  I happen to have a very happy family tonight though when they found out the cupcakes were not off limits.

Unfortunately my stand up cake for the boys is going to end up as just a regular plated and decorated cake rather than a stand-up.  I tied the wire as tight as I could but it still exploded out the smoke stack.  Oh well - the boys still think it looks cool so I'm not going to strive for perfection.

Don't get me wrong - the cakes taste fantastic!  I tried a couple recipes from the February 2011 issue of Better Homes and Gardens.

The first was the Classic Vanilla Cake (my husband is a vanilla cake lover and couldn't stop devouring little cupcakes so it was a very good recipe - I added in red, white and blue sprinkles to appease my 2 year old's love affair with all things sprinkled!).

The second was the Double Chocolate Cake recipe.  As a chocolate lover I can attest to this being a really good chocolate cake.  However, it still doesn't beat my mom's chocolate cake.  Mom - your cake is still the best!