Aqualad's Cake

While part of me knows that most of you Aquaman fans just aren't going to be terribly interested in this note, I'm posting it here in honor of my friend Leah Adezio. She was a great Aqualad fan, and loved the character from an early age. As a result, she made a cake for Aqualad's birthday each year, March 6th. And in her memory, I put together a cake this year ("made" is too nice a word for what I cobbled together). This is the first birthday cake I've baked in years, and I'm not much of a baker, so it could have turned out better... still...

Yum. Batter.

Ok, into the oven for however many minutes the directions say... minus 3 minutes for the non-stick pans, so it says on the box. Hope they cook all the way.

Time to gather the decorations and frosting. The frosting says "wait until the cake is completely cooled". Oh. No wonder the last cake I made was torn to shreds by the frosting.

Aqualad is technically 47 years old this year, having first appeared in Adventure Comics #269 from February of 1960. Of course, he was already a few years old in that story, but I'm not about to stick my head into that muddled thinking. Heck, 47 is old enough!

Baked cake! Well, whaddya know, the directions were right. Definitely cooked all the way through. But why are they so lopsided? What did I do wrong?

After letting them cool in the pan for the suggested 10 minutes, it's over to the cooling rack for these cakes. OH NO! One of them cracked right down the middle as soon as I walked away for a second. Whatever shall I do?

Heh. I've watched enough Food Network to know that it's not really a disaster. The cake will taste just as good. I let the cakes cool more while I ran out on some errands, including getting some Tad Williams Writing Aquaman flyers run off down at the local Staples.

After I return with my flyers and other errands accomplished, I put the cracked cake on a plate and pull out the frosting. The cake is cooled through, but I've never frosted a cake successfully in my life, so my expectations are pretty low at this point.

Hmmm. Looks a little like a filled pancake. I was able to reduce most of the lopsidedness by putting the lop-ends opposite each other. But still somewhat disappointing.

Whoa. That looks almost good enough to eat!

And time to finish it off. Food Network makes decorating look so easy. I'll be lucky if anyone can read what the cake says.

And that's it for The Cake. This one will get the candles lit and a little party with it after dinner tonight. I plan on making one every year on March 6th from here on out. Both for Aqualad and for Leah.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GARTH!

Update: My husband came home and looked at the cake, and said, "It needs gummy fish!" So I walked down to the local grocery and found some mini Swedish Fish, bought a buck's worth, and decorated the cake with little fishes.

Update: One last picture: