Don't play with it

***

So I baked a cake. It came out lovely - perfect texture and everything. There was a minor snafu because mom didn't put it in properly and the strawberry layer baked on a slant and some spilled over... But it still came out nice regardless. 

It's a double layered cake. The top layer is strawberry with crushed cherries. The bottom layer is chocolate and coffee. Ideally, I would've loved to do a cream cheese icing but I didn't have cream cheese... So instead, I substituted with lemon icing.

Here's my recipe:

1 cup margarine

1 3/4 cup white sugar

3 eggs

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 1/2 cup milk

2 1/2 cup all purpose flour

3 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

3-4 heaped tbs. unsweetened cocoa

3-4 tbs instant coffee

6 heaped tbs. strawberry milk powder ( I used Nesquik)

3 crushed confection cherries

2 mixing bowls.

You'd need a huge bowl. 

First you incorporate the butter and the sugar together. Add the eggs in one by one, beating the cake mix after each egg has been added. Then add the vanilla extract. Add the salt. The next step, add a little milk, mix. Then add a little flour, mix. And keep this up until all the milk and flour has been added. This step was a little daunting for me because the milk made me a little paranoid after it became so watery. However, the flour reduces the watery appearance. If you think you've added too much milk and it's too watery - I assume adding a little more flour might be the quick fix. Otherwise, the texture would come out somewhat pudding-ish. (Speaking from a disastrous experience *sigh*) 

**If you want to make a chocolate cake solely use the cocoa alone for the entire mixture. You might need more cocoa to make it extra chocolately. However, 6 heaped tbs. is ok.

At this point, you're basically done. Separate the mixture into two bowls (or just pour half into another bowl). In one bowl, add the chocolate and coffee. In the other, add the strawberry powder and the crushed cherries. 

I encourage you to taste both mixtures to make sure it tastes sufficiently strawberry-like and choc/coffee-like for your tastes. The first time I made a coffee cake, I put in a little coffee and tasted it mildly and thought it sufficed. Lo and behold, when the cake was done what was once mild was not even a taste but just a coloured presence on my cake. Stupes.

I iced the choc/coffee first and then put the other layer on top... and iced the whole thing.

Here's my finished product. It looks a bit messy because I didn't flour my pans properly and then there were the minor glitches... And I didn't have enough icing to mesh the two properly. It's covered in plastic wrap.

Again... don't mind how it look so... it tastes very good. :D

Now I must quickly get ready for class...

Ciao.

Shelli out.