Hot Mess Birthday Cake.

I'm not sure how I managed it... I mean, I know it was most definitely a matter of me volunteering...  But somehow I became responsible for making my nephew's birthday cake for his second birthday.

Normally, making a cake would be nothing to sweat for me. I make great cakes. And desserts in general. But because I've had so much more free time in the past two weeks, I spent way too much time perusing Pinterest and got way too ambitious.

Ambitious beyond my capabilities.

It started with me wanting to make a checkerboard birthday cake... So that when you cut into the birthday cake, it would look like a checkerboard.

This involved filling two small cake pans with different batters, cooking them... Then cutting them into large circles and mixing the two colors together...

This involved some patience and round cookie cutters.

Next came the making of the frosting.  I had meant for it to be red. But we only had so much food coloring. So it came out pink...

And that was actually fine, because I was going to top the whole thing with fondant.

I rolled it out, and laid it over the cake. It took quit a bit of effort to get it nice and smooth and tucked under the cake. And because I had frosted the underside with pink frosting (it should have been white - in hindsight), it kept oozing out as I was smoothing the fondant down at the bottom of the cake.

So the whole cake had a pinkish tint to it.

I attempted to make a checkerboard on the outside of the cake too.  I rolled a sheet of black fondant too, but didn't get it thin enough. So it came out looking like this as the final product...

Wonky. Uneven. Pink frosting oozing out.

But it tasted good. The kids got a kick out of it. And it tasted good.

I've now been nominated to make the Hot Mess Birthday Cake every year.