A preview of Sammy’s cake for tomorrow

As expected, making Sam's birthday cake was a bit of a timehog but I'm happy with the results and I think he's going to be thrilled. He spotted the pan after I washed it and found the pan exciting (although he didn't know what it was for) so I can just imagine how he's going to react to the finished cake. It’s hard to take a decent picture of a cake three feet long so here’s a rather bad one of the entire cake and then some close ups of the individual cars. They also show that I’m sort of sloppy when I decorate cakes.

A few thoughts on the cake pan…it takes a good 20 minutes or so to grease and flour the pan. I knew it would be that way but I was in denial until I was in the middle of the process. There were lots of small corners and I ended up putting too much shortening in there to make sure I covered it so I lost some of the detail. The interior of the pan is gold so when the cake was done, the outside wasn’t as brown as I had hoped.

The cake I made was nice and fluffy but I think the detail would have been nicer had I had a heavier cake, perhaps the one included with the pan. I really wanted a cake that would taste good without frosting so I didn’t want to risk using a new recipe; the fluffiness of the my cake also made the pan overflow a bit but it didn’t cause release problems. I think the nonstick surface of the pan is impressive and wonder if I could get away with using an oil spray and flour to grease the pan.

I'm hoping to get a great picture of Sam when he first sees the cake tomorrow. Wish me luck!