Sometimes you just know you need something in your life and your whole life has been void and you didn’t even know how or why until you saw “this”.

“This” was a cookies and cream cake.  My coworker showed me a picture someone posted on social media and it was immediately love at first sight.  I didn’t know the exact flavors of said pictured cake, but I figured I could come up with something.

That was a Tuesday.

By Friday I had told pretty much everyone I came in contact with (and I work a customer service job) my exact plans for the weekend: baking this cake.  “Ohhhhh!” “Baking?!?”  Alone in the kitchen.  (I like to party… What can I say?)

“Four layer chocolate cake with white chocolate icing and a ganache on top.”
“What is a ganache??”

I have found out that not everyone is interested in the process of making a cake or what you put in it…or how many layers…or what the difference between baking powder and baking soda is.  Their only concern is being your friend and happy they can partake in your finished product.  And that is how you make friends.  Not everyone has to know everything (like when you add a half teaspoon too much cinnamon in a king cake…the only person that knows is you and they don’t care).  That’s what friends are for…honesty.

Someone told me about her mean chocolate cake that everyone raves over.  “It’s SO simple and it’s on the back of the Hershey box!”  Only ever paying attention to the hot chocolate recipe, I’d never even noticed there was a chocolate cake recipe!  Duh!  Anyway, she said her nephew owned a restaurant and she had made that cake for the grand opening.  Then, he asked her to make it again for something else.  She realized a pattern and said, “Look, I’m not going to be making all these cakes.  I’ll teach you how to make it.”  And now her famous recipe is on the menu. 😀

Anyway, when I went to make my cake decided to give that recipe a whirl instead of using the one I already had.  The difference was a cup of boiling water and regular milk verses buttermilk.   The recipe makes a 2 layer 9 inch cake, so I doubled it and then iced it with a homemade white chocolate icing.

What’s funny is how much I had looked forward to making this cake all week.  I literally COULD NOT WAIT for Friday.  Friday night came and my car broke down.  Friday evening and Saturday I laid on my sofa paralyzed with anxiety about what I was going to do about a car.  Cake didn’t even matter anymore.  I persevered.  Mostly because I had talked about it so much I couldn’t be a wuss and go to work Monday and say, “Guys, remember that cake? I didn’t make it because my car broke down even though with a broken down car I would be home all weekend with cake ingredients.”  That didn’t make any sense even to my own neurotic ears when I thought it out loud.  Keep yourself accountable.  So, I did the logical thing and watched Ninja Turtles on Netflix(I had never seen it or thought to watch it…only when you’re not in your right mind…).  In the span of that movie and Back to the Future my cakes were completed and cooled and icing was made and ready to be put together Sunday morning.

Worth the anxiety.

I didn’t know what to do and ran out of patience to research how to put candy bars in a cake decently (and not my caveman method).  Just for the picture I stuffed them into the cake and a little while later when I came back my cake was splitting in half.  There was a huge canyon.  Tourists could have come and taken pictures standing by it.  I guess it was time to cut it!!  Next time I will attach the candy to skewers (duh!).