The Four Day Cake

A day or two before Andy's birthday he asked me if he could help make his cake this year.  I though that would be cool and fun.  How many kids want to do that with their moms?  I asked him what kind of cake he wanted and he said white cake with white frosting and a jelly filling.  Yeah, he's kind of boring and doesn't really like chocolate cake or frosting, but the jelly filling was a nice touch.  Except I've never made jelly filling before.  So, in my procrastinating, lazy kind of way I waited until the morning of his birthday to find a recipe for jelly filling.  I very un-carefully read the directions and realized that once we made the filling we would have to chill it for eight hours.  That did not leave time for us to make it together.

I went to the grocery store and got all the ingredients but also picked up a little cake.  A delicious strawberry shortcake to be exact.  When I picked him up from school I explained that we would have to chill the filling for too long to be able to eat it that day, his birthday, but that we could finish it the next day and have it with Charlie, who was out of town.  Plus he would get cake two days in a row because I had bought the other one.  He was actually cool with it and thought it was a great solution.  Whew!

Remember when I told you that I didn't read the directions very carefully?  Well the next day we went to finish making the cake and found that after you put the jelly between the layers you had to chill the cake for another several hours.  Not enough hours in the day to do that.  So, no cake on day two.  He was still good with it.  On day three we were supposed to frost the cake and then chill it for another two hours.  I kid you not.  We got busy and forgot to frost the cake and therefore did not chill it and so one more day went by and we did not eat his cake.

Fear not!  On day four I finally got my shit together and frosted and chilled the cake on time for dinner.  It was fabulous, everyone was happy, and Andy even thought it was cool that we celebrated his birthday for four days.  The benefit of having a (mostly) laid back twelve year old.  As it turned out, the cake was delicious and we had a ton of filling left over and have been using it on pancakes and waffles for the last two weeks.  I see that as a major win win for everybody!


The finished cake before we cut into it:

What it looked like inside: