I am making a cake.

Or rather, I am glorifying a cake.

I’m going to admit something here:  I’ve made cakes from scratch a handful of times, using cake flour and everything, and I’ve never had one come out with that lovely uniform, light texture of a boxed cake mix.  So you know what?  I’m using a freaking cake mix.  Sue me.  Can we move forward?

Aside:  Why is it spelled forward and not foreward?  Every other word I can think of with that prefix (even the homophone foreword) has an e.  What gives?

Anyway.

I am making a cake.  It’s a chocolate cake, and I wanted to jazz it up a bit, so I added a tablespoon of orange extract to the batter.  If what I licked off the beater is any indication, it had a really nice effect.  I was also all psyched to make a filling out of a layer of orange marmalade and a layer of chocolate ganache, but then I picked a bunch of strawberries from our garden and I wanted to get those involved, too.

Daunting was the task of layering those three items, but I came up with a brain flash to melt down the marmalade and coat the cut-up strawberries in it.  Then I drizzled the melty ganache on top of that.

Next, I made the frosting (cream cheese with a little orange extract in there too) and applied a crumb coat.  Confession #2:  I’ve never actually done a crumb coat before.  I know all the fancy bakers do it, and all those trijillion food blogs I read say you really, deeply must do it.  I decided to give it a try this time around, since it’s my first time using my Grammy’s fancy cake stand and I want it to be really pretty.

Right now my crumb coated cake is chilling.  I’ll report back when I’ve completed the next step.

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Update:  Oh my god, you guys.  I was a fool to have ever skipped a crumb coat.

Seriously.  It was kind of a pain to apply, and it looked like crap, but that was actually kind of freeing.  “Don’t worry,” I told myself.  “It’s okay that it looks like crap, because no one will see it.”  I got the thin coat of frosting on and stuck it in the fridge while I watched part of So You Think You Can Boogie Woogie on Tivo.

When I got back some 40 minutes later and applied the real frosting, it went on like a dream.  It coated easily, I didn’t pull off chunks of cake with the offset spatula, and it didn’t glob off onto the sides.  I also used a trick I read about on a food blog to stick pieces of parchment under the cake on the cake stand.  That way I could pull them out when I was done and the stand would be all tidy.

It looks all cute (if a little lopsided) decorated with my garden strawberries.  Tomorrow I’ll update with a picture of a slice of the cake, featuring its orange/chocolate/strawberry goodness.

And here it is with a slice cut out, as promised—actually two slices.  Denny and I each had one, even though I wanted thirty.