A Cake Story of Operatic Proportions?

Cake has been on my mind for various reasons the past couple of days. First, there was the fact that Little Man is about to turn 7 and, in preparation, I had the privilege of making the traditional family carrot cake with cream cheese icing yesterday.

All did not go well. The three layers of carrot cake turned out beautifully, but trouble reared its head when I started on the icing.

I placed the softened cream cheese and butter in the mixing bowl and began the mixer. So far so good. I added the vanilla. That also went well. But then came the fateful icing sugar. I was under the impression that we had some in a plastic container in the cupboard, so I started digging around. Lo and behold, there on the lazy susan was a clear container with lovely white powder. Full! I took my measuring cup, scooped out the first cup of powder, added it to the mixing bowl and continued to mix.

Immediately I realized that something was wrong. I've made this icing often enough (too often, probably) that I know the smooth texture that should result from adding the icing sugar. And that isn't what I got. Instead, the creamed butter and cream cheese began to clump up, developing the appearance and texture of butter cut into flour when making pastry.

Quickly I dipped a finger into the white powder in the plastic container and tasted. It wasn't icing sugar at all, but flour!

So now I had a cup of cream cheese, a half cup of butter, a teaspoon of vanilla, and a cup of flour in the mixing bowl. (I'm so thankful that I hadn't added all 3 1/2 cups of 'icing sugar' at once!) What could be done?

I'm not very experimental in the kitchen, so I went to the Internet and googled recipes with those ingredients. And what I got was a lot of recipes for cakes with cream cheese icing. It seems that flour isn't often mixed in with cream cheese.

My big sister wound up rescuing me through a cross-country phone call. C advised me to try for chocolate cream cheese cookies, looked up proportions of ingredients that would suit what I already had, and set me to work.

By the end of the evening I was left with one three-layer carrot cake with cream cheese icing (thanks to My Girl running out to the store to replenish the cream cheese and butter), and 3 dozen absolutely delicious cookies. Each little cookie tastes like a miniature chocolate cheese cake!

Oh that all my mistakes would turn out so wonderfully!

The second reason that I've been thinking about cakes is because one of the blogs that The Ones I Love and I enjoy visiting is Cake Wrecks, where we see everything from the beautiful to the atrocious. On that site I found a link to this You Tube video, which I watched late last night after salvaging the cream cheese mixture, and while I really should have been in bed sleeping in preparation for company today.

I shared the video with The Ones I Love at snack time today, and they (the non-adult ones) watched it several times with bigger and bigger smiles each time.

So I've embedded the video here, and hope you enjoy it. Take the time to watch to the very end - the finale is terrific. And if you want an additional view of the final product, you can watch the same video here. The resolution isn't as good, but it adds a few seconds at the end to give another angle. Enjoy!