happy cake day

on friday i made a cake for my mom. there was a reason for making it, but really, i was just in the mood to make a cake. had it not been a special day for my mom, i would have come up with some other excuse, like the fact that it was friday. and the weather was nice. and any excuse is a good excuse to make a cake.

this cake, though, was supposed to be for my mother. and so i wanted to make it especially for her. hence i decided to make a snickers cake, because snickers bars are one of her favorite candies. really though, i can't call it a snickers cake so much as a cake decorated with snickers.

it was a chocolate cake with caramel frosting, and i sprinkled chopped snickers bars on top. i used my favorite cake mix, pillsbury super moist chocolate, because unless i am serving the cake plain, i see no reason to make it from scratch. the pillsbury mix is always consistant, stays moist, and stands up to flipping and carving better than my favorite scratch recipe.

this time i also used a canned frosting. normally, i am totally against the icing that comes in those plastic tubs (icing, frosting, whatever you call it), because it usually has a processed flavor and a greasy finish that coats your mouth instead of melting on your tongue. but i found one that was caramel flavored, which is something i wanted to try. and to make caramel icing from scratch would have been way more work than i wanted on friday. i have to admit, i was pleasantly surprised, this frosting was not too bad, so i'll add it to the very short list of already made icings that i'm willing to use. the rest of the list is that coconut kind that goes on german chocolate cake, because whenever i've tried to make it from scratch i can never get the consistency right.

like i said, to make it a "snickers cake," i chopped up snickers bars and put them on top. had i really wanted to make it a "snickers cake," and had i thought about it ahead of time, i would have melted some snickers bars into the cake batter. or i would have put chopped snickers between the layers. or maybe threw some honey roasted peanuts into the cake batter, and spread caramel between the cake layers. so many variations, so many wasted opportunities.

still, it was a very yummy cake. and it made for a happy day. and of course, there's always next time.