The Round Cake 2010 Challenge

Back in January I attended the wedding of my dear friends Eunice and Jon. Their ceremony was outside (yes, in Chicago, in January--it was quite lovely, actually) and their reception was an intimate affair with family and a few close friends in their home. At some point in the evening (I'm a little fuzzy on the details of exactly when and how it came up, but it was likely prompted by Eunice & Jon's baking of their own wedding cake) my friend Bonnie and I got to talking about how we'd never baked and frosted a round layer cake ourselves. And that was the impetus for what we decided to call the "RC2010 Challenge," which basically entailed a promise from each of us that at some point during the year we would attempt such a feat.

Well, not a month later I learned that Bonnie had already cranked out TWO layer cakes (I got to enjoy the second one) and the challenge was ON. This week I decided it was time to get in the game. When an invitation came from my sister-in-law for dinner at her house tonight with my in-laws, I jumped at the chance to say, "I'll bring dessert!" And so, here is my first go-round at the heretofore unattempted round layer cake. It's a vanilla "funetti" cake with vanilla frosting and sprinkles, all components a la Pillsbury.

Things I learned in round one:

1. My brand-spanking new round cake pans are 9-inchers. When using a boxed cake mix, this results in two very shallow cake layers. The frosting conceals the layers in the photo, but trust me, there really are two layers in there. 
2. Just because two containers of Pillsbury frosting say "Vanilla," it does not mean they'll be the same color. The vanilla frosting that came with the sprinkles had a decidedly yellow hue, while the frosting in the other canister was definitely closer to white. I'm very glad I decided to buy that extra canister of frosting at the last minute, however (during the same emergency shopping trip required by the discovery that I only had two and not three eggs in the fridge), or my cake would have been half-naked, and that's just embarrassing. 

I cannot yet vouch for how the cake tastes (that will be left to my in-laws this evening...no pressure) but I am pleased that at the very least it looks pretty, in a boring-cake-redeemed-by-spring-inspired-sprinkles sort of way.