Happy Father's Day Cake

Happy Father's Day to all the men in our lives who are a daddy!!!  And a special Happy Father's Day to my own dad.  

And to my husband, Jérôme.  Thanks for being such a wonderful husband and father. 

I made a cake for Jérôme to celebrate the occasion.  

 

It had to be something relatively quick, as we were away last weekend, I had a million and one appointments last week and Logan woke up sick yesterday.  Good thing with fondant is that you can start making many of the decorations far in advance.

I used an altered cake mix recipe for this cake that I got from my cake decorating teacher.  To my recollection, I have never, EVER made a cake from a box before.  But someone in my cake class told me how good this recipe was, so I figured I had to give it a try.  And this was the perfect chance to do so, as I was pressed for time.  She told me that the vanilla version was better than the chocolate, so that's what I chose.  And it turned out to be pretty good.  I still prefer more dense cakes, but if you want to make a boxed cake, I'd recommend this.

1 box cake mix (no pudding in the mix)
1 small box instant pudding in coordinating flavour
1 C sour cream
1 whole large egg
3 large egg whites
1/2 C water
1/3 C oil (add one more tbsp. with chocolate)

Optional:
1 tsp. vanilla flavouring
1 tsp. almond flavouring
1 tsp. butter flavouring

I used a tsp. of pina colada flavouring, which I purchased from my teacher. 

1.  Mix all ingredients in mixer at speed one or two, scraping down sides, until just incorporated.  Batter will be very thick.  Fill pans just a little over half full.

2.  Bake at 325 degrees Fareneheit until centre bounces back and toothpick is clean.  Be careful not to underbake.  This will take longer to bake than an undoctored mix due to the added ingredients.

Note: cheesecake flavoured pudding will keep the batter more white in colour and vanilla will make it more yellow.

Due to my current freezer challenge, I am trying to not only empty the freezer, but also, to not stock it with anything new.  So this was a bit of a cake of leftovers (sorry honey...).  A cake of leftovers right down to using the remaining green buttercream icing from Logan's birthday cake (which I will post shortly).  I used this to crumb coat the cake.  I figured that it was only for us, so it didn't matter and it was better than throwing all of the green stuff in the garbage.

As you can tell from the picture, I found it more difficult to crumb coat this cake than the ones I made for Maddy and Logan's birthday (to come shortly).  Probably partly because this cake wasn't as dense.  And partly because I was in a huge rush.

I used leftover cream cheese icing (from my lemon curd filled lemon cupcakes with lemon icing) as filling.  Not on purpose, as Jérôme doesn't like lemon.  I didn't notice it was lemon until I had it defrosted.  And then I just hoped that he wouldn't notice... And he didn't ;P  

Now you'd think this would not taste good at all with the pina colada flavouring I had put into the cake.  But I just wanted to get rid of everything, so I charged ahead even after I realized the cream cheese icing was lemon.  And you couldn't even tell.  In fact, the whole thing tasted pretty darned good.

the green buttercream makes it look a bit odd, but it was delicious!

 

 

I used a bit of shimmer on the white fondant