Red Velvet Cake

  I finally got to make the recipe I've been dying to create since the holidays. I've never made a cake from scratch in my life. Sure, I've helped my grandmother create her world-famous Pound Cake from scratch for years and years, but this was entirely a Ms. Williams production. Since Velvet Cake is "one of those cakes" people suggest you pick and choose, I was really worried. What if my cake was one of those failures? As the saying goes, "you can't just eat everyone's Velvet Cake".
  The recipe was retrieved from a fabulous recipe blog. If you get a chance, please browse Miss Catherine's blog Living the Gourmet. She has so many wonderful and easy dishes. I initially chose the Red Velvet Cake recipe to bake for Christmas, but got sick as a dog. When January rolled around, I decided to bake the cake for my father's birthday on the 18th. I'm happy to report that it was indeed a hit. It has a wonderful cinnamon flavor that blends peacefully with the sweet cream cheese frosting. My only issue with the recipe is that the cake frosting wasn't really sweet enough. I had to doctor it a bit to my own personal liking. I made sure to keep some of the cream cheese taste, but not so much where it still tasted like cream cheese and more of a vanilla creme kind of flavor. I added a touch more confectioner's sugar and vanilla than called for in the original recipe.

  In my usual fashion of being festive with little to no artistic talent, I decided to get cute with it. I couldn't leave the cake naked as a Jaybird. A week before dad's birthday, I went to Wal-Mart to get a set of cake decoration pens/markers and some numeral candles. In my head I saw a cake topped with pretty stars and confetti-like decorations with awesome lettering. What happened really didn't match what was in my head:

  The marker/pen tips are supposed to be feathered and angled so as not to disturb frosting and whatnot. One thing-- the red marker was the only one like that. The rest were pointy. I had to go over a few sections more than once. After I was finished scribbling all over the cake, I put it in the fridge for the next day. After we came home from dinner, dad and his girlfriend were ready for the so-called cake I'd been beaming about since yesterday. When they both took that first bite and said "MMMM!" at the same time, I knew that dad really enjoyed his birthday cake. For a first time baking from scratch and not some overpriced box, I think I did a good job. Yay! :-D

Dad, his girlfriend, and the cake.