Hopping down the bunny trail

Hope everyone had a good Easter. My parents came to my house this year, in order to avoid a big family gathering of future in-laws at my cousin's house. :) We did some sight-seeing - went to the Cherry Blossom Festival, which was kind of a let-down, and two museums, the Freer Gallery and the Museum of African Art, which were also let-downs. Then we went to Georgetown and ate outside on the waterfront and I got a sunburn.

Anyway, so this was my first time cooking a holiday dinner. I made a couple of my favorite recipes of the ones I've tried, which came out very well. My mom also made her pineapple casserole, which I'd love to give you the recipe for, except she didn't exactly have it written down.

For dessert, I took a risk and tried two new recipes: The Best Chocolate Sheet Cake. Ever. and That's the Best Frosting I've Ever Had. The results? I am reminded of this quote: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

The cake came out decently, and my dad thought it was better than a regular box cake, but my mom and I concluded that it tasted about the same, which in my book usually means it's not worth the effort to do it from scratch. I didn't make the frosting that goes with the cake, which in retrospect was possibly a mistake, but I took both of these recipes from Ree's blog, and when she made the Best Frosting Ever, this is the cake recipe she paired it with.

The frosting came out like crap. It didn't taste terrible - my mom liked that it wasn't too sweet - but it wasn't very good, either. The major problem was the look and texture, though. It did not look like frosting. My mom has no experience making her own frosting, so she couldn't tell me what went wrong, but she was suspicious of the flour in the recipe. I don't know if that's what screwed it up, or if it was that the sugar and butter weren't creamed enough, but the frosting definitely had a clumpy, grainy texture to it, and it didn't spread well at ALL. It was also really watery when I first made it, but I refrigerated it overnight, which made it firmer and somewhat more frosting-like, but still not enough to save it.

I really wanted to go to the store and buy a tub of frosting, but my parents insisted it wasn't that bad and we ate it. They are sometimes too kind. :) We did not, however, ice the entire cake, so I'll be tossing this frosting and using the store-bought stuff for the leftovers, that's for sure.