Although we know it’s a tradition, Devon and I did not keep the top tier from our original wedding cake to freeze and eat on our first anniversary. I knew there was no way that Devon would eat something that has been sitting around in a freezer for a whole year, and we had heard from other people that their own cakes tasted pretty “freezer-ish” at the one year mark. I didn’t think much of this until I started making rolls for our anniversary dinner on Sunday and came up with the bright idea that I would make a mini wedding cake for us to eat. It sounded simple in my mind; I would make an almond cake with raspberry filling just like we had at our wedding. I had a cake mix and raspberry preserves I could use for the fill layer. Except oops, once I take out the cake mix I see that it is expired. No problem, I think, I can make a cake from scratch. A glance in the fridge showed I had one egg, and that was reserved for the rolls. No problem, I can google. I’ll find a recipe for an eggless cake from scratch. I found a few recipes that got good reviews on Allrecipes, so I gather all the ingredients and realize that the key sweetener is sweetened condensed milk. Normally I have this on hand, but of course I don’t right then. Googling again (no, I haven’t given up yet) I find that you can heat 1/3 cup of evaporated milk with a cup of water and a few tablespoons of butter and use that as a substitute for sweetened condensed milk. (It really tastes just like it.) I made the cake and it turned out surprisingly light and fluffy. It held together fairly well without any eggs. After it cooled, I whipped up some seven minute frosting, since to be honest I really don’t like buttercream that much. I frosted the cake liberally with huge waves of glossy white frosting. It really was beautiful. Unfortunately, neither of us had any room for it after dinner, so we set it aside to eat the next day. I thought about taking pictures of how pretty it was, but figured that was something that could be done the next day as well. Well, this is what we came home to the next day:

The frosting deflated overnight and pooled near the bottom of the cake. Tasty. I ate a bite just because I didn’t want all my work to be wasted, but the rest of the cake went in the garbage. The lesson is, if you decide to make a cake and don’t have ingredients on hand, just stop right there. Do you really need a cake anyway? Do yourself a favor and go out for dessert.