"Wait a minute. They're not baking any cake!"

This weekend was another one of those "Celebrity Birthday Cake" weekends. Danhole and I were going to make up for a ton of slacking that happened in April and May due to weddings and other uncontrollable events (ha). Come to think of it, it's a wonder anyone made it out alive during those months. Anyway, here is the list of the celebrity birthdays close to our small, cold hearts that were honored:

Jennie Garth - April 3
Eddie Murphy - April 3 (coincidence?)
Rick Schroeder (aka "The Ricker") - April 13
Sarah Michelle Gellar - April 14
Conan O'Brien - April 18
Valerie Bertinelli - April 23 (remind me to share with you my thoughts on Jennie Garth, Valerie Bertinelli, and Shakespeare - whose birthday also happens to be today, mind you)

Oh, wait, here's a fun fact: Did you know that Nick Ashford, Lance Bass, and Maynard Ferguson all share a birthday (May 4)? Somewhere in Oviedo, a Messer's head is exploding.
Bea Arthur - May 13 (Woot!)
David Boreanaz - May 16
Mr. T - May 21
Danny Wuerffel (awww yeah!) May 27

Okay, enough of that.

Anyway, since cake time was due, we decided to also celebrate the birthdays of two very important people to Banana World: Lisa from Armsweat and lengli from the lengli blog. They often lure me into fits of uncontrollable laughter, and have driven me to sloppy, ugly tears. They appreciate a good Tacky Blonde Lady now and again.

And, if nothing else, Tri-State Area (excluding Connecticut, of course), Fucking Represent!

Sorry about that.

So, we set out to bake this cake. Lengli told me her likey via blog comments back and forth. I had problems posting comments to Lisa's blog, and forgot to ask her what she liked during the week; but when I finally did get her preference, I felt like a badassmofo because we did manage to get her likey in, too. And when that crazy bitch currently stalking Kylie and Fleur Delacour in France told me she wanted little silver balls on the cake to make it a disco ball cake, well, it was off to the fucking races, my friends!

Well, that was the plan, until we got to the worst-equipped grocery store ever for making a disco ball cake.

Publix usually is a pleasant shopping experience, but this particular Publix had very little of what we needed for our baking masterpiece. Hell, we were lucky to come out of there with the cake mix and eggs! There were no silver cake decorating balls to be found, no cool edible props for the top. I was extremely disappointed, especially at the prospect of letting the bloggirls down.

We did manage to get some yellow cake and triple chocolate cake mix, and headed back to Casa Danholio (hasta el fin de Septiembre, putitos.

The standard plan applied: big-ass heart-shaped cake. This one would have one layer of yellow, one of triple chocolate, chocolate frosting in the middle of the layers, whipped vanilla on the outside. This would give us the opportunity excuse to ladle on extra chocolate frosting between bites. Yes, we're amazingly stupid. But at least we got some milk.

Since I've always been the prep girl, I decided to allow Danhole the honors of mixing this time around. He did so, and we happily put the cakes into the oven at the same time, as they both required the same bake time and temp.

The result was, well, odd.

The yellow cake did not rise as much as the triple chocolate, and the triple chocolate puffed up huge on one side. It looked like a skate ramp coming out of the oven. We figured things would get better once the cakes cooled and settled. We watched a little Garden State and ate subs while we waited.

I went back to the cakes. Yeah, they settled, all right. The yellow one actually shrank in size, and looked like a damned trapezoid; the chocolate did a little, but not nearly as much, and still looked like a puffy, cakey skate ramp. Fahk. I did my best to level them out, throwing slivers of unfrosted cake at Danhole to eat so that I wouldn't feel bad about wasting.

Then, I put the yellow cake as the bottom layer, thinking it looked more dense and would serve as a better anchor. I trimmed the chocolate layer to the size of the yellow, except the curves of the heart really couldn't be trimmed down without making them look like triangles. I had to accept that the top layer would be slightly larger than the bottom; but it would be all right, since the frosting would cover everything.

I am just stupid enough to think that putting a chocolate layer on top, then using whipped vanilla frosting to cover said layer would be an effortless job.

The chocolate layer kept producing refugee crumbs that would mar the perfect layer of icing I was attempting to slather on this masterpiece that was speeding downhill. What was worse was that the can of icing we got, for some ridiculous reason, was not enough to cover the whole cake! I only managed to get the top of the heart, with none left to coat the sides! This was bullshit, because every heart-shaped cake we've ever baked made do with one good can of frosting! We'd even have enough to spackle the curves of the heart to the base! Mother scratcher!

Never mind that the whipped frosting, although delicious, was so thin, it slipped into the cracks and crevices of the cake, screaming to the casual observer that this was not baked as a heart, but as individual parts. Gah. And frick. On a stick.

I still manage to steady my hand enough to scrawl a message on the cake. I have no artistic talent, so any attempts on my behalf to draw a likeness of Michael Vartan (yummy in his own right!) would be poor stick figures, at best. Also, there is no room on this Cake of Doom to pen something terribly witty. So, I did the best I could with what I had:


Photo courtesy of Danhole Portraits.

I hope you ladies like it enough to not yell at me. And I promise that for the next cake baked for celebrity birthdays, I will do my best to include those balls you love so much.

Sorry. Just had to stick that one in.

That's what he said.

Yikes!