When you get handed lemons....

I signed up for another 8 weeks of cake decorating but unfortunately the class was canceled....but I want to improve so I am going to keep on truckin'. Although I was learning alot of decorating techniques, I was growing weary of cakes with buttercream icing. Since the choice of cake and decorating is now mine, my plan is to scale back a bit on the decorating and concentrate on my baking techniques.

I decided to make a white jello poke cake from scratch. This cake was a white cake recipe taken from a cupcake recipe book I have (A Baker's Field Guide to Cupcakes by Dede Wilson).
Unfortunately, I wasn't making cupcakes. I wanted to make rectangular jello poke cake....so I figured I would just follow the cupcake recipe and pour into a 9x13 pan. I figured this plan would work since a box cake allows you to make 2 9-inch cakes, 1 9x13 cake or 24 cupcakes. What I didn't realize until I was pouring the batter into the pan was that this recipe only made 18 cupcakes. Grrr...that meant I didn't really have enough batter to make decent sized cake. But I am not easily deterred! I simply baked my barely there cake into a nice flat mini-cake. Once cool and out of the pan, I made the jello, poked the cake and poured the jello over the cake. Chilled that for a few hours while I pondered my next cake recovery move...I decided to cut the flat cake into 3 strips and then layered them with some whip cream in between each layer. As is typical with my desserts, it tasted good but was not very visually appealing (which you can verify for yourself by the photo above). It looks more like some sort of hero sandwich than a cake.