A Lemon of a Cake

On Christmas day we were invited to attend dinner with my friend's family. She has quite a large family and they take turns hosting the event. She rented a local lodge and gave us our assignment: bring a couple desserts. Hah! No problem. Desserts are my specialty. I love to bake. Yay!

I had recently found a lemon cake recipe online that sounded delicious. It was to be made in a bundt pan, so I thought it would be festive and a bit different, figuring folks would probably have had a belly full of sugar cookies and chocolates by now.

Christmas Eve I set into making the cake. Well, it called for cake flour which I didn't have, but that's no big deal...but then I ran out of regular flour with a 1/2 cup to go so I substituted whole wheat flour. Oh, and I didn't really have buttermilk, so I soured regular milk instead, and I didn't really have lemon zest, but who's going to miss that?

Into the bundt pan it went. Out of the bundt pan was a bit more difficult.

After much coaxing with a butter knife it finally came out...well most of it anyway. The chunks left in the pan I carefully removed and fit back into their places like lemony pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I figured that once it was frosted no one would be the wiser.

The next day I made the icing. It was very uncooperative and runny. Hmmm. I put it in the fridge for a while hoping it would thicken up somehow. In the meantime I made a nice easy gingerbread cake from a mix. It was smelling delicious. I took the gingerbread out of the oven and set it on a burner to cool. Unfortunately, Sis decided to make some Top Ramen and accidentally turned on the wrong burner. I took the icing from the fridge, and as I was trying to convince it to pull itself together, I heard a loud crack and the sound of glass flying around behind me. Pyrex pans are only so tolerant of intense heat, and my gingerbread cake was now lying in a lovely bed of shattered glass. Festive yes, safe for consumption, no.

I frosted the lemon cake and well, basically the frosting just ran off onto the counter. The powdered sugar never really blended with the butter so it was all lumpy. This was not looking good-literally. I consulted with Sis and she confirmed that we in no way could bring that cake to the party.

So I went to plan B...which involved a bag of sugar cookie mix, and a box of chocolates I had received as a gift. So much for my incredible baking skills!

As a side note, later that night Sis decided to try the lemon cake. After all, the frosting that we licked off the counter tasted great, and looks aren't everything, right? Wrong. It tasted as bad as it looked and had the texture of a stale brick. Ewww.