Happy Birthday Lauren

My friend's daughter is turning 11 this week. Her party is today and she wanted a purse cake. Since my friend couldn't find anyone who either had time to make one, would make one, or wouldn't require she order one that served a minimum of 25...we decided to take on the task ourselves.

She found the directions on the Betty Crocker website. She baked the cake, I made the icing and we converged last night to put it together.

It was almost tragic. First the cake wanted to tip over to one side and nothing was helping. After several failed attempts to level it and many minutes just standing there staring at it, I came up with the idea to build the icing up on the side that was leaning to prop it up...and it worked. We also had a problem with the chocolate cake crumbs coming off in the icing. We tried every trick I knew of and nothing was working. Finally we just decided to put it in the fridge after we got the thin layer on and let it set up and use all the remaining icing to put a thicker layer on (which meant no black icing accents as originally planned).

But when we were finished, we were pleased with our final outcome. Not too bad for to amateurs on their first attempt. I don't foresee this being my new career though. I will stick to sugar cookies...they're easier. ;o)