From scratch.

My mom's birthday was on the 14th. She loves yellow cake with white icing. I wanted to go above and beyond for her birthday cake. I wanted to make one from scratch.

Did I use the recipes I already have for a homemade cake? Heaven's no. That would have been too easy.

I found a new recipe that was suppose to knock my socks off and promised I would never make another box cake again. Ever!

I let the new mixer, mix this scratch cake for me.

The batter taste yummy, with the faint scent of my homemade vanilla filling the air I slipped the cake into the oven to cook for 35 minutes. Though my directions said 45 minutes.

Then I went another step above and beyond. I was going to whip up homemade frosting. Not the powdered sugar kind. The kind where you cook the sugar and water into a syrup and then add it to egg whites and beat the tar out of it for 10 minutes until stiff peaks form.

Doesn't it look soooo yummy?? I've made you hungry haven't I? I know, me too, I was salivating for this cake from start to finish.

But....where's the picture of the finished cake all freshly baked and covered in stiff peaked icing? It flopped. It was a complete and total disaster. The cake ended up almost like a dry bread, extremely lacking in flavor and all that is suppose to be good and holy in a cake and I'm still not sure why. I follow directinos like nobody's business.

Oh, and the icing, the icing was more of a tease of what a real icing is suppose to be. It was so disappointing that I flat out refused to take a picture of it the finished product.

Flat. Out. Refused.

The moral of this story: Stick to the recipes you already have for your mom's birthday.