cake disaster

So Tasha wanted buttermilk brownies (some call it Texas Sheet Cake) for her birthday cake. While I am a firm believer that birthday cakes should not be stuck in a jelly roll pan, she insisted that it was fine. But I was not going to let that happen.

I decided that in addition to the sheet cake I would make a round triple layer cake for her to put the candles on. I won't go into details, but it was a super frustrating night I just couldn't seem to get anything right.

• I lost a layer when it tumbled out of my hand and onto the rack and all over the oven. It was a mess as it baked onto the rack and was too hot to clean up before it burned onto the bottom of the oven.
  
• I tried to re-make that layer only to discover I was out of flour. So I settled for a two layer cake.
• As I was frosting it with the warm fudge frosting, it kept oozing down the side. I had expected this but thought that if I just ran the spatula around the sides as it cooled, then it would keep it up and cool the way I wanted. Um, it doesn't.
• While running the spatula around the sides, a small part of the top layer cracked off. I was a little frustrated so I gave myself a time out. When I came back, the cake looked as pictured below.

Needless to say, I did not take this to Tasha's. Ashley came home and offered to make another sheetcake because she could see my frustration and despair. My baking funk must have been strong and leached onto Ashley because she first made the recipe but forgot to put in the water. Then she got all the ingredients right, but her cake turned out as pictured below. And our oven is not really uneven.

I took another stab at it and we finally got a second presentable sheet cake. But we never got our sanity back.

Silver lining? We totally ate the layer cake that looked like it had survived an earthquake. It was delicious. I stuck the recipe here. It is my Mom's recipe, but the frosting is 1 1/2 x her original. This gives you a slightly thicker layer of the delicious fudge-like frosting and won't leave the cake deprived when you leave a generously thick layer in the bowl for you to lick out.