Betty Crocker, Jr that is!! I tackled my first cake... from scratch!!
Jesse bought me a Kitchen Aid Mixer for Christmas. (The color is flat black... I know you wanted to know!) I don't bake all that much... actually probably never unless asked to. But I am sucker for kitchen gadgets!! It looks real pretty sitting on my counter and makes me look like quite the housewife!
I really wanted to try out the mixer, plus I was craving something sweet and a cake sounded so good! A red velvet cake to be exact! I went to my trusty foodnetwork.com and found a recipe that said "easy".
The mixer is awesome! I love it! Except I can't figure out how to add the flour and not have flour dust all over my counter and mixer! I was covered from head to toe in flour, my counters, the floor, the mixer... was covered in flour. I was worried a blew out so much flour that I might have to add more in!! Then it came time for making the frosting and the same thing happened all over again except this time it was powdered sugar!! I tried to be smart and put a towel over it to keep it from fluffing out... but it still snuck out.
Another reason why I am not into this baking... so many rules. You have to use cake flour! Huh? Why can't I just use flour? (I used my regular flour.) Your cold items should be room temperature... grrr that means I have to plan ahead. Sifting! I don't own a sifter and what does sifting do anyways? I'll just fluff it with a fork... that'll count towards sifting. ; ) Measurements have to be exact, you can't just dump in ingredients... unless you are my friend Lacy. She is a big time baker and she never follows a recipe and she never measures. I always look at her like she is crazy and she says... sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
The end result was well worth it! I even took pictures I was so proud of my first real non-box cake!! It was moist, fluffy, and so good! I might even have to do this more often... not that I need to eat this more often... it was just kind of fun to bake and the mixer does all the work!
Now, I am not a clean perfectionist when it comes to this frosting thing. Plus I freaked out a bit because after I bought all the ingredients it said that they make 1-1/2 of the frosting to frost this 3-layer cake. Why don't they just make the ingredients more then, not just say that they do this!?!? I didn't have enough of every thing to make another half batch of frosting so I skimped on my layers... but then had way too much at the end. Oh well. Lesson learned.
Don't you want to come over and have a piece of this with a big tall glass of ice cold milk?!?!
8 comments:
Your flour is flying out probably because you have it beating too fast. Slow it down a little baby! After its mixed in you can crank it up.
By the way, the cake looks great!
I would have to give you the same advice Lynn- slow the mixer down while you add your dry ingredients. And I knew you could make this from scratch and nothing out of a box can beat that!!! I wish I could have a piece... guess I have to settle for chocolate chip cookies which I baked yesterday...
L
I'm glad you had the other moms to tell you what the problem was b/c I didn't have a clue.... my Kitchen Aid Mixer is a spoon and my arm and I certainly can't beat that fast.... I'm not a cake lover but it look pretty, love the color.
Maybe my mixer has too much power. I was on the lowest setting and it was still flying all over the place. I even thought I was turned on too high but couldn't go any lower. And I was dumping a little in at a time. Except the powdered sugar... I dumped all 4 cups in and I knew I was in for a sugar mess but I was ready to just eat this cake by that time.
I have a chocolate cake recipe for you to try. Quit laughing...I have made a cake or 2 from scratch!! I will e-mail you the recipe, it's soooo easy and soooo yummy.
Hooray for your first cake from scratch!! And a bigger hooray for a Kitchen Aid Mixer!!!! I have ths ame problem with my flour/sugar when I bake. I get it all over the place too no matter how careful I am. Note of advice on the mixer....use it often and if you find that you're not using it too much, run it for a few minutes anyways. You see, ours leaks oil and supposedly it's from not using it enough. That's what the customer service person told us. However, I started running it even when I wasn't using and it didn't stop the problem. So, just make sure you run it everyone once in a while and hopefully you'll never have our problem! Your cake looks beautiful and I would love a piece with a glass of milk. I'll be right upstairs. Oh wait :(
Yum! Lynn, it looks marvelous!
You'll always have the messy part of using your Kitchen Aid with dry ingredients... but if it really bugs you, they sell a plastic cover thing that snaps over the bowl and prevents the flying flour shrapnel. I just tend to stand next to it with my hands over the bowl and figure it's better to have the dust hit me than the whole kitchen. :)
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