Boogered Out Birthday

I'm glad birthdays come once a year.

You wouldn't think preparation for a kid's party would be such a big deal - especially when we're having a pot of chili and a birthday cake.

Originally I planned to make the cake Wednesday night. But, who knew the goppy goo Wilton blops in their cake pans to hold on a paper sheet w/ a picture of a finished cake would take over TWO hours to get out of the pan?

I soaked, I scrubbed, I scraped, I tried oil, then I searched the internet and found out that I needed industrial strength adhesive removal to get the stuff off and it still was a chore! Wilton's gonna get a complaint from me.

So, by the time I had the pan de-gooped, it was late.

Yesterday morning found me pouring cake mix into the Kitchenaid, oven pre-heating, and a Booger eating bars (those fruit cereal bar thingies). I read, re-read and read again the directions at every step. I've messed up so many food items a small country could die from my efforts!

I opened the oven when the buzzer went off. The sides of the cake crawled out of the pan, all over the oven and the center was about 1/2'' thick! First I panicked, then I called my Mom.

Mom used to decorate cakes professionally. I sure didn't inherit the cake genes. She assured me she NEVER had the fiasco unfolding in my oven. She'd only caught her oven on fire and nearly burned the house down.

It was the dumb high-altitude thing. In teeny-tiny words that are unreadable with a microscope, the box of cake mix described high altitude as anything over 3500'. Ummmm, I live in the Mile High City.

I guess that qualifies for high altitude.

A second box of cake mix as backup is a good thing.

The second cake baked nicely, I even double slimed the inside to assure it'd slide out of the pan with ease. At first the cake refused to budge. I figured if this one was a bust, the zoo theme would change to a clean-up-after-the-animals-zoo-poo theme for that 's what chocolate cake looks like when it's all sorts of crumbly.

I spent NINE hours making a birthday cake yesterday. How many kids out there can claim their mom spent NINE hours in the kitchen for a custom cake? I only know of one. Okay, Mom, you did. But wait a minute, it didn't take you NINE hours... You did it in like, three...