Overachieving

Relax, I've got nothing important to announce here.

This isn't about us.

But a couple in our Wednesday dance group is getting married soon. And the club wanted to surprise them with a celebration. And a cake. From Costco.

Costco?!?

John insisted we weren't serving no stinking Coscto cake while he and I stood idly by. So we made a frightening mid-holiday-season trek to Michaels for a twelve-inch cake round, some cake supports and the dancing couple, pulled out the caramel cake recipe, rolled up our sleeves and got to work.

We're not professionals and we have no intention of quitting our day jobs, but I'm hoping our efforts won't make the front page of Cake Wrecks either.

Lessons learned and/or reinforced:

1. All ovens are not created equal. For logistical reasons we did our baking in John's parents' kitchen. Their oven is the same make as ours, an earlier model in a different color. And a completely different animal.

2. When baking in a kitchen not my own, I will make no assumptions about what might/might not be a pantry staple. What's in ready supply in MY kitchen may be an exotic ingredient in yours.

3. We are MUCH better bakers than we are cake decorators.

4. Our friends are either very very kind, blind, or have never seen a professionally decorated wedding cake (or some combination of the above).

In the end, the bride and groom-to-be were suitably surprised, and everyone who tasted it raved about the cake. A qualified success.

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From the archives...
I went digging in the ancestral archives in 2006 an emerged with a 1960s Bavarian Mint for Retro Recipe Challenge #5.
In 2007 Barbara captured a summer dessert prize in the heart of winter.