the cake that got my knickers in a twist.

Not quite the no.1 entry I was planning for 2012,

but what the hey?

I am serious. I have a few more entries stored in my head for moments like this when time-computers-and anti-blocking things all work together and allow me to come on here.....

but this cake,



this one is by Paisley Jade...... http://www.paisleyjade.com/2011/02/rainbow-cake.html



this cake....

(the one that started it all)

it could be the make or break of me in the blogging world.

I may not 'belong' here anymore.

How can you be a proper blogger when you

'fail' the all important

rainbow cake?

To be honest,

I blame China.
I could leave this post here.

I was a fool to promise Miss O that for her 8th birthday get-together

(just fyi, I'm thinking about dropping the word 'party' from birthdays now 'cause it just adds too much pressure...)

........that I would make her the infamous rainbow cake.

Bursting with bright rainbow colours, wrapped in a delicious white vanilla cream icing.... so delicious and fairy-light.... and just 'so'.

China (the part we live in) does not have rainbows.

Houston, problem no.1... too much..... lower-grey-cloud-stuff blocking the rainbows.

Actually, I believe the problem may have started before we even moved here...

when we insisted the landlord installed an oven in the kitchen.....

because there wasn't one.

Baking is not big here.

Unless you like a sweet bun with an egg in the middle.... or sausage.... but yeah, your standard baking ingredients are for hunters and gatherers (like myself) to find.

I have most things.

But no food colourings. No icing gels.

(Rainbow cakes need colour aye?)

So I bought jelly.

Cause I had this plan to make food colouring from it.

Bit of a dumb-arse plan in hindsight.

I also bought 4 tubes of really expensive-cause-it's-imported icing writer tubes.....

which I squeezed empty into the divided bowls of cake batter.

We got colours.

Weak, murky, pastel-ly colours.

One layer tastes suspiciously like blackcurrant jelly, but is pink-ish.

It's a weak hazy rainbow.

China also doesn't have any baking paper.

You know, the stuff that stops cake mixture from sticking to the pan.. so I tried greasing the pan well.

The first layer came out.....well, I pressed the pieces back together.



first layer. success? i did manage to press it together.

 

it's a rainbow puzzle cake....



I also only have one round cake pan.... slightly too big.... so it took FOREVER to bake the damn murky, pastel-weak-jelly tasting -crumbling rainbow cake.

Do you know how many muffin cases it takes to layer one cake pan?

i ran out of muffin cases and moved onto ..... paper plates.... (hangs head in shame)

Anyways.

I made the vanilla butter icing.... smothered each layer..... took 2 blocks of butter which are worth their weight in gold here... cause it's NZ butter, literally wrapped in gold... and I burnt some of it in the microwave 'cause I left some gold wrapper on it.

So what we have for tomorrow's get-together is

the world's ugliest rainbow cake ever.

Seriously tragic. It has deep valleys and holes in the sides which give the Grand Canyon a run for it's money.



this is the good side.



I also put the icing on the top when the top layer was still slightly warm....

amateur-hour baking here.... and then I sprinkled colourful stars on it (also not known in the China-night sky)... before I'd finished applying the icing...

I then managed to put a big blob of crumby icing on the top.



blob.



This is a humbling day for me.



happy birthday Miss O??

..... Please don't give up on me.

P.S. I have been on blogging sabbatical. It's been a while and A LOT has happened.... A LOT I would like to write about.... but we are not set up well here with laptops etc... it will hopefully get sorted.
MJ has an entire week off which means this coming week I should have some laptop time.... it's Chinese New Year this week which is bigger than anything ones imagination could come up with. I had no idea.
I haven't forgotten my give-away either which I will sort out too.
Stuff has happened which has shocked and rocked my world a bit.
But God is bigger.
And I have to keep telling myself this.
XX