Sweetheart Cake

Sweetheart Cake , originally uploaded by yibbityibbit.

Is it sad that I practiced making my own birthday cake tonight? I have a good reason, this is my first adventure into rolled frosting. I've been watching Ace of Cakes too much. I've been lusting after that silky smooth finish. Yearning for those clean lines and sharp angles. There's only one problem: Fondant tastes NASTY. Well, OK, maybe there is two problems, butter cream tastes WONDERFUL. Particularly MY butter cream. My butter cream is more of an event...really. My headstone will probably read: Here Lies Mom of All Trades. She couldn't keep house worth squat but her butter cream was divine.

I could tell you my secret, but then I'd have to kill you.

Anyway. Not wishing to give up my butter cream tastiness, I used my now famous super Google skillz and came up with a lovely little thing called Rolled Buttercream. It is still lacking the creamy perfection of butter cream, but I was able to get pretty close to my signature flavor.

So I made myself a lemon cake covered with play-doh that tastes like buttercream. It is kinda pretty, all those clean lines and satiny smoothness. And I only swore once when I rolled it all out, smoothed it and polished it and my three year old punched her little fists into it, declaring it perfect and ruining all that satiny smoothness. Well, OK, I swore again when I rolled it all back out smoothed and polished it and tried to lift it onto the cake. They have you roll it on a board for a reason. It will not tolerate folding or lifting. It breaks in half. Once I followed the directions and rolled it out, smoothed and polished it for the third time, I found that it wasn't too tricky to smooth down the sides of the cake. Kinda fun. I used the recipe on Allrecipes. With my flavor modifications.