birthday cake

Ralph (the owner of the house I rent a room in) celebrated a birthday last week, so I decided to throw him a party, complete with a cake.  I asked Autumn if she would help me (a clever ruse to kidnap her beautiful kitchen) and planned to head over there Wednesday after work. 

I was planning on making a jelly roll, and frosting it to look like a birch log, making some crack about "another year down!"  chopping down trees sort of thing.  Decorating looks pretty easy, would turn out really well, etc.  However, I didn't realize that jelly rolls are actually difficult to make.  Involving beating egg yolks for 5 minutes (hooray the kitchenaide) and whipping egg whites to the point of stiff peaks.  Not that those things are particularly hard, just quite involved.  Then you fold stuff together, and bake for 15 minutes, and flip it over on a towel covered in powdered sugar, roll up, and let cool before unrolling to spread the filling out.  Re-roll, and decorate. 

Armed with Autumn's mantra of "frosting covers a multitude of sins" we start on this adventure.  We followed the directions, mostly.  I got a little impatient with the egg yolks, so I shorted them about a minute of whipping.  Not detrimental.  I got things a little out of order when it comes to folding them together.  Shouldn't matter.  Baked it fine, maybe a little dry on one side.  Our big problem came when it hung on to the pan for dear life.  Yes, to those of you asking, we did grease the pan.  We flipped it over onto the towel (insert physics lesson here regarding displaced air and powdered sugar's nearly weightless state, resulting in displaced air transferring powdered sugar EVERYWHERE).  No luck.  We tapped on the pan.  The only result of that was more powdered sugar shooting out the sides.  Finally Autumn handed me a spatula.  The thing came off in chunks.  Non-salvagable chunks.  Even frosting couldn't piece this jelly roll together. 

Thankful for plan B, I ran home and grabbed some boxed cake mixes, and made a lovely double layered cake, complete with artwork from Ralph's 5 year old grandson adorning the top.  The guys in the hangar even got to enjoy "brownie thins" the next day, so it wasn't a total loss! 

My aunt suggested baking the jelly roll on parchment paper.  It will come out of the pan easier, and you can peel the paper off before rolling in the towel.  I guess this won't be my last jelly roll attempt...