California Cake

Well, the internet addiction is possibly waning. I'm still afraid to re-activate my Facebook account though. I know what will happen when I do that.

I was commissioned last week to make a cake for my Aunt who's been without an oven since EASTER!!? How could you survive? I guess it's a separate stove top deal so it's not as bad as I'd thought. But STILL. I suppose I haven't used our oven that much, but it would be a challenge.

The recipe I followed was Boston Cream Cake. It's basically a box cake mix with pudding in the middle.

Sounds easy enough...

I used Betty Crocker's Butter Yellow cake mix. I just now noticed that there's pudding in the mix too...good choice.

I followed the instructions and mixed the four ingredients together, greased my pans, and let it bake.

The cakes were very sticky. I don't recommend using your hand when you flip them out.

Next, (actually a few hours before hand) I made the pudding. Seriously though, I suggest making the pudding as early as you can, maybe even the night before. The more it sets the better for this. Mine could have probably set longer. 

I only used about 1.5 cups of milk instead of the 2 the box called for. This is per the recommendation on All Recipes comments.

Mixing that wasn't hard at all.

Then into the fridge it went.

The cakes cooled and I attempted to flip them out of the pans...

The bottom layer lost a little mass, but I managed to carefully get the piece off the bottom of the pan without breaking it more and slipped it in.

I layered on the pudding filling and put the top layer on.

There are many things that might have lead to this cake earning the name "California Cake" but I think putting the slightly larger cake layer on the top was the most contributing factor.

Icing it was messy but easy. I melted a full container of store-bought icing i  the microwave. I went for either 20 or 30 seconds, I don't remember but it was melted well and easy to stir.

I poured that icing over the cake and tried to gather it off the bottom of the pan, but it was messy...and this was when I realized the tragedy that ensued...

California Earth Quake Cake is what I started calling it.

It had to be moved in the car so I tried to at least poke it with extra long toothpicks to help it hold up some in the car. I also put it in the freezer for a little while to help it harden up but I dont think it was in there long enough.

I hear tell it was delicious just the same. I'll probably try this again someday...it did smell wonderful! And...I'm counting this as my new recipe for last week. Sure, I've made all of the ingredients before but I've never combined them this way and learned from doing it: so it counts.