Cake and sprinkles.

We had another bake-off at work. The theme was red which meant we have to incorporate something red in our food. I kind of cheated because I made a white cake with white frosting and added some red sprinkles in order to qualify.

I don't care that I cheated, it was delicious and that is really all that matters. Plus, I had great intentions of making it a marble cake by using red food dye, but when I went to the store I was feeling cheap and food dye is expensive.

About the cake. I am going to let you in on a little secret: you can make a box cake taste like it's from scratch. It's easy. Follow me, I'll tell you how.

The Lazy Cook's "From Scratch" Cake

1. Make a box cake according to the instructions (I chose to make a french vanilla cake), but when mixing the ingredients, add one heaping scoop of sour cream and three teaspoons butter!  Easy cheesy and it will make the cake moist and delicious and seriously so good.
2. Make your own frosting. It makes all the difference.

I made frosting found here on tasty kitchen. It was really good, super light and airy, but really, really rich. I liked it a lot, but I am more of a cream cheese frosting kind of girl and may stick to that. However, everyone else adored it so I would recommend making it at least once to try it out. It may change your life if your life is easily changed.

(Almost) The Best Frosting I've Ever Had

• 5 Tbs Flour
• 1 cup Milk
• 1 tsp Vanilla
• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup granulated (not powdered) sugar

In a saucepan, whisk flour into milk and heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. You want it to be super thick, like the consistency of brownie mix. This will take approx. 3 minutes and scare that heck out of you because it looks weird as it happens. 

Remove from heat, stir in vanilla, and cool to room temperature. 

While mixture cools, cream butter and sugar until it is super whipped and light and fluffy. There should be no graininess left. I didn't know you could whip the graininess out of sugar but you can. I suggest using a standing mixer because it takes about 10 minutes and that would make my hand get tired but my Kitchen Aid never ties, it's indestructible.

Add the cooled flour mixture and beat it with the butter mixture until it resembles whipped cream (another 10+ minutes). It should be CRAZY light and fluffy, like whipped cream consistency. 

Enjoy.

P.S. if you're wondering, I did win the cook-off, but only by default because everyone else forgot to bring something. I don't know if I count that as a victory. However, I did get a ton of compliments and it was gone pretty quickly so I'll take that as a consolation prize.