Better Than Betty Spice Cake

I was asked to make a spice cake for a 60th birthday celebration combined with a housewarming party. The birthday man apparently likes Betty's Box Spice Cake (which I completely understand because it was my favorite growing up) and I needed to one-up Betty for this party. 

When I was a kid I really did like spice cake. But there is a gross part... I'm not sure you are ready yet... ok maybe now... I liked to eat my cake with ice cream... mixed in... like one giant cake-flavored-ice cream-goo. I'm pretty sure Cold Stone Creamery owes me royalties for inventing this flavor (cake batter). I haven't had Betty's version in a few years, but the version I made might knock her socks off (more like stockings off, that is if she really existed). 

Now that you know about my weird childhood cake techniques, I'll tell you a little about making these cakes. They needed enough to serve 150, so I made some sheet cakes and a three tiered cake for lighting ablaze with 60 candles. I recommend keeping a fire extinguisher handy. I used fresh ground cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon. M decided that cloves consumed within baked goods is much less offensive than standing near the coffee grinder filled with fresh ground cloves. Cake flour, and buttermilk to finish her off. I frosted them with a fantastic cream cheese frosting recipe and boxed them up for delivery. 

Delivering cakes makes me nervous. I have flashbacks of delivering the wedding cake (almost a disaster) and decided that the trunk was my friend. The boxes fit the cardboards well to eliminate sliding, and I packed them in so well they wouldn't move. This delivery turned out much better than the last, except the only person there to accept them was a teenage boy and his friends. Strange. So I drove home, and M and I went to the movies. Just before the movie started, I got an email from my client that said she had made a huge mistake and told me the wrong day! Well, that explained a lot, but they asked if I could do it all over again this weekend. Not horrible since I was paid for all of the cakes, but it sure was a lot of baking! These are the times when I wish my oven would mute into a fancy well tempered double oven. And that I could magically duplicate pans to bake multiple cakes at once. But I survived, and my dear Kitchen-Aid survived too, and my client ate spice cake for days.