Another Birthday Cake!

I spent a great deal of my week making a very special birthday cake. If you've seen my first post then you know how much I love to make birthday cakes. I like to go a bit further than just the plain square cake with the edible confetti. This was a 21st birthday cake for a friend of mine. He happens to love Mikes Hard Pink Lemonade, so I thought what would be better than a Mike's Hard Pink Lemonade birthday cake?! Granted this didn't have any alcohol in it, but it did taste like pink lemonade!
My first challenge was the find a recipe for a pink lemonade cake. I searched the internet, mostly finding recipes that required you to freeze the cake. That was something I didn't want to do. I posted a recipe search on Yahoo Answers and received a recipe made by Paula Deen's sons. It was the perfect recipe. It was super simple and was made with ingredients that aren't a pain to find, like some I was reading about in other recipes. Here's the recipe:
Ingredients
1 box white cake mix (18.25-ounce)
3 tablespoons pink lemonade drink powder
3 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
Directions
Cooking Directions
Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter two 8-inch round cake pans or sheet cake pan and line the bottom with parchment or waxed paper; set aside.

For the cake, in a large bowl, stir together the cake mix and lemonade powder. Prepare the cake batter according to the package directions, using the eggs and the oil. Stir the lemon zest into the batter. Pour the batter evenly into the prepared pans. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until golden and a toothpick inserted in the centers of the cakes comes out clean. Let the cakes cool in the pans for 10 minutes. Carefully turn cakes out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

The most labor intensive, if you could call it that, was zesting the lemon. Granted I do hate zesting anything, it wasn't that bad. I used a 9 by 13 inch pan since I had to carve something out of the cake. I was slightly disappointed when the cake didn't rise as much as other cakes do. I was expecting to be able to cut the cake in half and ice it to make it look bigger, but I was unable to cut it due to the size. Also, it didn't take 30 to 35 minutes for me, maybe 27 at most.

After it kind of cooled ( I felt the need to rush, so I didn't let it cool so long. Big Mistake. Let it cool!) I cut it into the shape using the template I made out of parchment paper. I crumb coated it and set it in the fridge to set before icing it. For those of you who aren't addicted to baking shows like me, crumb coating is when you ice a very thin layer of icing in order to "lock" the crumbs in. You don't want crumbs in the icing to ruin the look of the cake, do you? After about 15 minutes I took the cake out of the fridge and iced it with my family's secret icing recipe. I wish I could share it because it really is the best icing ever! I tinted some pink to make it look like it was filled with pink lemonade. I set it back in the fridge and made the royal icing to put the finishing touches on the cake at a later point. Royal icing recipe found here: http://www.joyofbaking.com/RoyalIcing.html (Mine was the meringue powder recipe!)

Day two of cake decorating was my panic day. If you've made a cake with me or seen me make a cake then you understand what my panic day was like. It's the day the cake is due to be celebrated with and I'm icing and decorating down to the wire. I start to panic if something goes wrong, but things seems to work themselves out. Anyways, day two consisted of the wost cake baking day ever! I couldn't tint my icing black. It just kept turning purple. Not good. I panicked, I cried. A terrible day in the history of cake baking. But, it got done after an hour of walking to stores trying to find dye. I mixed the colors and followed the pattern I made with tooth pick pokes. I carried the cake covered through the rain to the surprise party place. It was a hit. It was a surprise!
Happy Birthday Adam!