Baking Day

So, you all know I was in a tizzy about getting ready for the graduation party. The theme Grace and I chose was "Let Them Eat Cake" and I had a plan for 12 different kinds of cakes.
Could I have done this alone? I'm thinking my family would have felt the brunt of it if I'd tried. But I didn't have to.
On Thursday night, Grace and her friend Emily took the ingredients to Emily's house and baked a turtle cake. Turtle cake has a layer of German chocolate cake on the bottom, caramel and chocolate chips in the middle then a layer of German chocolate cake on the top. I made another one of those at our house. Then I made two Cola cakes. Ever take a cake out of the pan and put it on a serving platter? It's very flat looking. So I increased the recipe by half to make it look fuller. For some reason, I kept messing up on the math for that increased recipe. The cakes turned out okay, but not my best Cola cakes.
I also made a carrot cake which is practically healthy enough to serve for dinner. It has carrots, coconut, pineapple, yogurt and golden raisins in it.
I had been to the grocery and had all the ingredients. I was ready for baking day.
Ruth drove down from Michigan on Thursday night, arriving after 11 as I waited up bleary-eyes.
The next morning, Sheila came by 8:30 a.m. loaded down with cake pans and a mixer.
Sheila created a Lemon-Lime refrigerator cake that includes lime jello and lemon pudding. On the day of the party, one niece asked whether we'd injected the cake with Sprite. She thought it tasted amazing. Ruth started making lemon curd for her lemon cake with raspberries. I know. Who makes homemade lemon curd?
"Good lemon curd tastes like sunshine," according to Ruth.
I kind of scurried around getting ingredients and staying ahead of the dishes. I also made the icing for the Cola cakes and had Grace ice them. Grace was so sweet when she got up and saw us in the kitchen. She said something like, "You guys are the best."
The oven was full of cakes and the smells emanated as the air conditioner worked overtime to keep us cool.
Earl and I had to run back to the store three times when we needed extra ingredients, like red food coloring for the red velvet cake.
Sheila baked a chocolate cake with cherry pie filling that was so moist. She also made a chocolate cake with whipped cream and heath bar icing.
A firefighter who stopped by the day of the party said, "That heath bar cake is awful. You'll probably want to donate it to the fire station so no one has to eat it." He had a couple of pieces.
Ruth whipped up a white cake in a bundt pan (because that was the only free pan I had left by then) that we later iced with a butter cream frosting and put strawberries and blueberries in the layers between and on top.
Sheila's daughter Bethany came over and hung with Grace. They made little name cards for each of the cakes and decorated some cakes with their own interesting style. Like the carrot cake. Too cute, right?
Ruth baked the red cake, which is really a buttercream or Italian cream cake with red food coloring added. I don't know why we add the red food coloring, it's just what Aunt Ruby has always done.
Somewhere along the way, I made two pineapple upside down cakes.
My friends oohed and aahed at the pineapple upside down cake and how perfect it looked. It's so simple, I'm not sure how they mess it up, but my prediction is that they don't wait for it to cool before they pull it out of the pan.
All of these cakes we made, plus the bakery cake Earl picked up Saturday morning, and the two cookie cakes we got from the grocery store, made up our selection of the "Let Them Eat Cake" party.
Because Lucia asked for it in a previous post, here's the recipe for Cola Cake from Southern Living Cookbook
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
2 cups sugar
Combine and set aside.
In a heavy saucepan, combine 1 cup Coke, 1 cup butter and 2 Tbsp. of cocoa.
Bring to a boil stirring contantly.
Mix into the flour mixture.
Add 1/2 cup buttermilk (Since I don't ever buy buttermilk, I use milk with a tsp of vinegar), 2 eggs beaten, 1 tsp vanilla and 1 1/2 cups of mini marshmallows.
Pour into a greased and floured 13X9X2 inch pan. Bake at 350 for 30 to 35 minutes.
The icing needs 1/2 cup of butter, 1/4 cup of Coke, 3 Tbsp of Cocoa, 3 cups of powdered sugar and 1 tsp. of vanilla.
Cook the butter, Coke and cocoa together and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add the next ingredients. Spread it on the cake and Voila! Enjoy.