Another Birthday Cake Experiment

Today we did the family celebration for ZBoy's birthday.  Both sets of grandparents were invited over, along with his friend William.  And even though Z requested a strawberry rhubarb pie from Village Inn as his "cake", I didn't think there would be enough pie to go around - so I decided to try making this cake.  It's one of those giant cupcake forms made out of silicone.  (I did NOT use the filler insert.)

I've never cooked with a silicone form before...  they really emphasized spraying the "non-stick" form with cooking spray thoroughly before filling.  Guess that's what makes it non-stick, huh?  Anyway, I whipped up some cake batter, filled the bottom part up to the fill line and put the rest in the "top" portion.  I put it in the oven as directed and when they came out, they were VERY poofy.  I think I cut off about a third of the cake to make it level for stacking together...

When I unmolded them, I had to laugh.  I had half of Madonna's bra from her scary pointy bra phase and the Elephant Man's nose.  Somehow I don't think that's how it was supposed to turn out.  I'm not sure what I did wrong, as I followed all the directions.  The sides of the cake were also pretty crusty.  Like they were overdone - but it had to cook that long to be done all the way through.  I even turned the temperature down and cooked it like a bundt cake, so it shouldn't have done that...

The cake molds come with a little insert that gives you all kinds of decorating ideas.  Most of them left me feeling a bit squirmy - I don't really go for cutesy elephants or puppy dogs... and my circus cake looks MUCH better than theirs.  I had a can of vanilla icing and a can of chocolate.  I thought I'd do the bottom part white.  Looks a bit like a yurt, doesn't it?  Just needs a little door.  It was a good start though.

I still had some leftover red from last week's circus cake, so I figured what the heck...  No actual design in mind here;  just  round and round the cake-i-go theme.  Perhaps it looks like a bomb, or a target from the top.  To me, it didn't look like anything...

I guess it didn't have to look like anything.  It got eaten.  Z said, "This is the hardest cake I've ever eaten...  but it tastes really good!"  Ah, damned with faint praise.  Delicious, but not tasty, as I used to tell my own mother.  I'm not sure I'd ever do this cake again.  Maybe I just need more practice with silicone molds, or a different cake mix - or a different oven.  The one I have?  Well, setting a temperature is kind of a crap shoot.  Sometimes 25 degrees lower than your intended temperature is right, and sometimes it's 50.  But if the recipe calls for 350 and you set it at 350, you'll be eating charcoal briquets.

Still, a worthy experiment.