Why I Don't Bake

Monday we attempted to make a birthday cake for my dad's wife Rachel.

I was reminded why I don't bake...

It's always harder and more involved than it seems in the beginning.

Step one of the recipe: "cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy"

Easy, right?

Apparently I missed the whole Kitchenaid Stand Mixer craze when we were registering for our wedding. So I have yet to find a way to not get butter and sugar all over our kitchen when I try to mix things with our hand mixer. Butter and sugar were plastered all over our kitchen! And since baking is so precise, I had no idea how much of the actual ingredients were in the bowl and not on the floor. Shoot.

But we persevered on..

Until the recipe called for "buttermilk." Something I definitely forgot to get in the store during my latest grocery shop (I was probably too busy skipping...see previous post).

Luckily, since all of our Thanksgiving dishes seem to call for some kind of dairy product or another, I happened to have some heavy whipping cream. And thanks to Ben's new girlfriend Siri (the electronic voice on his iphone) she helped us find a way to make buttermilk from heavy whipping cream. 

This involved a mason jar and lots and lots and lots of shaking. 

We've never felt more like pioneers in our life.

But, eventually all of the shaking led to whipped cream. Which with a little more persistence led to buttermilk:

Oh. And BUTTER:

Crazy right?! Cool, but not exactly what I had in mind AN HOUR previous when I started out  to make a lil ol' birthday cake.

When I was done the quote of the day was from Ben who said, (looking at our messy kitchen and nursing sore muscles from all of that Mason jar shaking...)

"Remind ME to remind YOU to never bake again."

Point taken.

****

However, in the midst of baking, I did have an extraordinary helper named Mimi. 

Who was busy making her own concoction

("strawberry chocolate chip cake")

 

So it's because of her enthusiasm and this sweet face:

That I will probably bake again sometime.

(but not for awhile...yay for store bought christmas cookie mixes!)