MDBD Nerdy Nummies Edition - Chemistry Lab Cake

This blog is a little late because I've been busy trying to get caught up on reports for work. Just when I get ahead of the game I have a week where multiple reports can't be written because I am waiting on info from someone. Last week was one of those weeks.

Anyhow, on Sunday we did our second week of MDBD Nerdy Nummies edition. Zoey's original choice was Apple Pi Pie, but I figured we should do that closer to Pi Day, so I made her pick something else. She went with the Chemistry Lab Cake.

What we were making (pg 44)

The ingredients we needed

Our baking tools

This is a recipe that has been featured on Nerdy Nummies, however, in the video Ro used a box cake mix and in the cookbook she used a made from scratch pound cake. I had planned on doing the from scratch edition; however, it calls for whole milk and we are a skim milk family. I don't know if that would actually make a difference, but I didn't want to risk it, so box cake it was. 

Zoey mixing up the batter

This cake requires you to split the batter between two small Pyrex bowels. So you either need to have two of the same size glass bowls or you need to do what I did and make one cake at a time. Since these are very dense cakes, Ro recommends a slow bake method, so you cook them on 330 (which I just had to guess on since my oven is not digital) for 28 minutes. My first cake took 35 minutes and my second one tool about 45 minutes. I discovered after the first cake was done and out of the bowl, that I was way off on estimating half of the batter, so my second cake was much bigger. It wasn't a huge deal since I had to use the cake leveler to even the tops out anyhow. However, I do think it made my cake a little shorter than it should have been.

Once your cakes have completely cooled and you have leveled them, you stick them together with a layer of frosting.

Then it is time to make the neck of the beaker out of the rice krispies. This was not nearly as easy as Ro made it look, especially the lip of the beaker. We made it work though. You attach them using a wooden skewer.

Then we went about frosting the whole thing white.

After it's frosted, you stick it in the freezer for 10 minutes. I then tried smoothing the white frosting out a little but more before finishing it off with blue frosting and attempting to make the milliliter line. The #2 decorating tip did not work out well. I had a hard time getting the icing to come out smooth.

Finished

My final grade for this MDBD is a B. The taste was good and for out first time trying to shape rice crispies and frost a cake like this, I'd say we did pretty good.

Zoey's Post MDBD Analysis (She got a little side tracked)