Cake wreck

I've discovered there's a very good reason I've never made "real" birthday cakes for my children.  And that reason is, because I suck at baking.  And cooking, and anything else you do in the kitchen. Parks asked for a chocolate cake with red frosting.  That should be a piece of cake, I thought (wakka-wakka).  But I learned a few things whilst making said cake.  Among them are:

Apparently, you shouldn't use cooking spray and flour in the bottom of a pan when making a cake.  Nope, that doesn't work.  Apparently you should use shortening and flour.  Well, why don't they SAY that in the recipe?  Honestly.  I was feeling all proud of myself for making a cake FROM SCRATCH.  I really did.  No cake mix or anything, and this is what happened:

Isn't that a beaut'?  I dumped the thing over and it comes out like one big pile of dirt (I was thinking something else, but dirt seemed like a more appropriate four-letter word).  I literally took handfuls of cake and smooshed them all together to make that somewhat oval-shaped thing at the bottom of the picture.  Really, does that look appetizing to you?

But wait!  "I can salvage this!"  I thought to myself.  I'll just cover it all up with frosting.  Well, apparently it's a pain in the you-know-what to make red frosting. I swear I dumped half the red food coloring thingy into the frosting and it was still pink!  And apparently when you dump that much coloring into the frosting, it loses its frosting consistency and instead turns your frosting into liquid.  Who knew?!!

So I'm glopping on the stinking red (pink) frosting slurry and Maddie is "helping" by telling me that I really need to practice more.  And maybe I should let her do it instead because I'm not doing a very good job.  Welp, I'll tell you what, that's the last time Maddie helps with cakes.  Needless to say, she was not my favorite person at that point, and quickly got banished outdoors.

But I kept at it.  I was so sure frosting would fix everything.  Well, as it started to harden, it didn't look too horrible.  Then as I added the licorice whips I thought I could maybe pull this thing off. Well, I'll spare you the rest of the gory details, but here's what the cake ended up looking like:

I guess it's better than could be expected given the circumstances.  But it was sure an adventure I'm not soon to repeat.  Honestly, next year, it's store bought all the way, baby.  At least he liked it:

And, if you want to get a laugh at some other "cake wrecks", make sure to check out this blog.  It's sure to lift your spirits.  This post just had me rolling.  Not sure why misspelling "Happy Birthday" is so funny, but it is.  It so is.