What Happens When You Can't Find the Cake Pans

So if you follow my Twitter feed you'll know that the night before Jonah's birthday party I finally got around to thinking about a cake. That's pretty typical of me. This is a source of immense frustration for my poor dear husband—the fly by the seat of my pants thing. It rather stresses him out that I often wait until the last moment to realize/think of something. Dave is the type that plans ahead. Which is probably why he has bailed me out of more hairy situations than I can count. But I digress....

So I set out to bake my cake. I had found a cute little train topper from the B & O Railroad museum and was going to make a simple little cake (courtesy of Duncan Hines). But apparently I forgot...er...a few minor things. One, I forgot to buy frosting. But no mind, I was sure I had the ingredients to make frosting.

While searching for frosting ingredients, I discovered the food coloring I bought 3 years ago had transformed from gel to some form of igneous rock. But no mind, because we are fine with uncolored frosting. Who needs colored frosting? It's still a party as long as there's cake, right?

But when it came time to pour the batter into something, it was the missing cake pans that REALLY threw a wrench into my well-laid plans . Those cake pans WHICH I KNOW I HAVE TWO OF SOMEWHERE IN THIS HOUSE, went missing. Perhaps they took a holiday and forgot to check their planner which clearly says they were already booked for Saturday night. Maybe they up and moved to someone else's kitchen—someone who is a slight more organized than myself—and neglected to leave a forwarding address.

So forced with the alternative (no cake) I pulled a large bowl out of the cabinet. It was one of those confused I'm a measuring device, now I'm a batter bowl, wait! now I'm a bowl you can bake a cake in and turn it into Barbie's dress type of thing.

So armed with a box of cake mix, a couple sticks of butter, some sugar and a box of dark cocoa powder (oh and I should throw in here some lemon heads and good and plentys left over from movie night) I set out to make a theme cake.

Here's where I should tell you I don't really care for theme cakes. Partly because I can never pull them off and partly because I like things I can't necessarily find in Family Fun. I like Family Fun. I appreciate Family Fun types of cakes. It's just that I'm a classic birthday cake kinda gal. When you have to start out with blueprints and rough cutting to create some elaborate castle or treasure box, you totally lose me. I lack the patience. And the technique. Honestly I can barely handle very simple shapes and even simpler decoration. My eyes start to glaze over when I see anything that involves any sort of construction, fancy piping, or frosting that requires a tool other than a butter knife.

In any event, here is what we ended up with—a slightly melted dark chocolate buttercream frosted mountain with a carved out tunnel. Made the night before. Much like all of my projects in school. At least I haven't changed: