Cake!

My little sister's birthday was Wednesday, she turned 28! We were planning a cookout for today, and I decided to make her a cake for her birthday. I haven't had much luck making cakes before, they always stuck to the pan, (even when greased and floured) and I haven't tried a layered cake yet in my life, so I thought I would be adventuresome and try to make a 3 layered cake. It was a Mandarin orange cake with pineapple frosting. I mixed up the batter, it looked great - divided into the 3 pans (new pans I had to buy to make the cake!), baked it, and each one came out beautifully! I was so excited! It smelled wonderful too. So I let them cool, and frosted and layered the cake up... then finished frosting it. Mike came in and thought it was really great! I thought so too, it looked perfect to me! I was so excited to have made it for my Sister! It was cool in the house, so I thought I would leave it sitting on the cake platter thingy overnight on the dining table. About a half-hour later, as I was cleaning up, Mike (dear husband) came in and said "it's melting!" OH MY GOSH!!!!! The frosting was made with cool whip, canned frosting, and crushed pineapple... and I didn't think about the fact that it might "melt"! I was devastated! Here was a beautiful Birthday Cake, and now it was ruined! UGH!!!! Anyway, I put it into the fridge, and fixed it as well as I could the next day before everyone arrived for the cookout. The layers slid a little, but otherwise it looked fine, and tasted great!

Here's a picture of what my first 3 layered cake looked like:

(updated 9/28/07) I decided to put the recipe I used here... it was really good, pretty light, but really yummy and easy to make!

Ingredients:

1- package yellow cake mix

1- 11oz container of mandarin oranges (with juice)

3 eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2- packages of vanilla pudding mix

1- container of French Vanilla whipped frosting

9oz CoolWhip thawed

8oz crushed pineapple (drain juice)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 3 9" cake pans. Mix together cake mix, oranges and juice, eggs, oil, and one package of the pudding mix. Make sure to beat well so all of the oranges get crushed up and spread around. Divide into pans, and bake for 20-25 minutes, use a cake tester to make sure it's done before you take them out! Cool cakes in the pan for about 10 minutes, then turn out onto cooling racks.

For the frosting, combine bought Frosting, Cool Whip, Pineapple, and vanilla pudding mix. You may want to refrigerate the frosting before frosting the cake.

Frost between layers and around cake quickly to prevent melting, and then store in a fridge before serving.