Hello everyone! Welcome to Blogmas Day 6! Today, I’m sharing my experience baking a cake from scratch with you.

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I did bake this cake for Thanksgiving so you might have followed along my Twitter journey with this cake as well as seeing it on my Instagram but if not, here it is! I know Thanksgiving was a week ago but this isn’t a Thanksgiving specific cake so I figured I may as well share.

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Step One: Prep for the Bake

So first up, I had to find a recipe! I went to Pinterest for that and saved a ton of pins. For my first cake I wanted to make something that looked simple, but still would be a cake and frosting from scratch. I picked a Spiced Honey Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting that I found from Bon Appetit. Not sponsored or partnered in any way but thought I’d share which recipe I used. It is pinned into my “yummy!” board on my Pinterest!

Then, I had to check what I had and buy what I needed! I asked my mom what she had already that I might be able to use, which is always kind of annoying because 1) she has to make every item into a full story of why she does or doesn’t have it when all I need is a yes or no and 2) the kitchen has no organization whatsoever. Honestly I think that’s one of the main reasons why I never try to do anything in the kitchen since I can never find anything! Anyway, I finally got a list together for the items I needed from the recipe I was following and headed to Target.

When I got to Target I actually ended up pulling up the recipe I plan on following for my Christmas bake as well because they were having a promotion for a gift card if you spent a certain amount and I needed stuff for that anyway! I have to say, it was a little annoying and felt wasteful to buy all that stuff for one recipe when I would only need a tiny bit but I still got everything, except the vanilla bean because I couldn’t find it. I think in the future if it’s something I don’t think will last long and I won’t use again then I’ll try to find a substitute.

I also stopped at Mariano’s for a last few items as the Target I went to didn’t have a few things. I pretty much needed just the oranges for the orange juice as well as a lemon, and the vanilla bean. I still didn’t find the vanilla bean so I ended up using a vanilla extract my mom already had.

After those two stores, I was all set!

Step Two: Bake the Cake

So I did split up the bake into two days. One for the actual cake, the other for the frosting! It didn’t take too long but I made the cake on Wednesday after work so it was getting late and I decided to do the frosting separately due to the time.

I found the recipe pretty easy to follow! I would have preferred to print out the recipe probably because I didn’t measure everything out first and instead had to keep scrolling up and down on my phone to get the measurements for each item I was adding in. It wasn’t so bad though and I was able to get everything measured fairly quickly, mix, and get the cake into the oven. I must say, the most annoying part of the baking process is how often I had to wash my hands honestly. The rest was pretty easy!

After the cake was out of the oven I waited for it to cool a bit and then plopped it onto a plate to fully cool. Once it did I wrapped it and set it to the side so I could finish it the next day.

Step Three: Decorate

I honestly think the frosting was the most stressful part of it all. I hadn’t ever made frosting before so I really wasn’t sure how the ingredients were supposed to make frosting, especially when I started mixing them together and it looked like anything but frosting. Then, out of nowhere, I had frosting! The coconut cream was probably the most wasted item though because I bought an entire can of it, mixed in a few spoonfuls, and then it was sooooo coconut-y so I didn’t even put the rest of the cream in. My parents loved the frosting though since they love coconut but I’m not a fan so it wasn’t my favorite.

Step Four: Enjoy!

So there’s the finished cake! I put blue sprinkles on top because it looked like it needed something fun on it but there you go! I think the cake was a tad too dry which was weird because I put it into the oven for 45 minutes which was the shortest amount of time in the window that the recipe suggested. Maybe it would have been good with just 40 though as I think that’s why it was so dry. The frosting I think was too coconut-y as I said but my parents love coconut and they loved it so I guess it was good!

Overall, I don’t like how wasteful it is to bake. Since I don’t do it often then I know there’s a chance some of the items will go to waste like the coconut milk/cream can that I won’t use up or the buttermilk carton I bought and only needed a cup of (I made pancakes with it though so it wouldn’t be fully wasted). Things like cream cheese we’ll use for other things or the flour will last awhile so I’m not too worried about that but the other random little things were quite sad to think about wasting. I’m sure if I baked more often I wouldn’t be worried about it or if I knew how to put more stuff together without a recipe and knew what I could use to substitute that wouldn’t be as big of an issue so maybe I just need to keep baking!

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So, am I ready to compete on the Great British Baking Show yet? Just kidding, I’m pretty sure I’d need to be British. But this was fun all the same!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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