Special Delivery Cake

Two days ago was C's birthday - you know, C, L's brother - the one who brought infamy to an otherwise innocuous (if not deliciously addicting) cranberry upside down cake. We aren't quite into the gift-giving realm of not-quite-inlaw-hood, so I usually just bake him something. Last year, for instance, was a batch of cupcakes designed to look like sushi. Kind of. This year, I baked him an upside down UPS box - so that he could have his very own, genuine upside-down cake.

Even if you have no desire to replicate the design I made, you should try both the cake and the icing, because they're fabulous. The cake is a yellow cake, very reminiscent of the flavors we've all come to love in that hate-to-love-it box mix. It stays moist and tasty, even after being kept in a trunk in just above freezing temperatures (though I would've preferred it, to be perfectly honest, had we had time to warm it to room temperature). The only "complaint" I really have is that it seems to be a little bit heavy on the sugar. The recipe says to line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper, and the top of that cake when I tried to peel off the parchment was downright gooey. There was a puddle of liquid under my cooling rack by the time the cake was ready to be constructed and frosted. I don't know that this is a bad thing - it's certainly not the worst title a cake has ever beared (born? bore? huh.) - but it is something to consider.

As for the frosting, I needed something more tan than chocolate brown if I wanted it to really look like a cardboard box. Plus, if I used a traditional chocolate frosting, then I would have had a much more difficult time finding something to use as a writing medium. So, with this brown sugar frosting, which I think is much more aptly named a chocolate whipped cream frosting, I was able to better approximate the color of cardboard as well as use a simple melted chocolate for the writing. The actual frosting was night - very light, not too decadent or rich or overpowering. I'm not a fan of the gobs of confectioner's sugar + shortening that bakeries tend to use, and I could also do without the really rich buttercreams more often than not. I like the cake to dominate, and the frosting to accent. This definitely does this. There's just this little bitsy after taste that I noticed and wasn't thrilled with. Right now I'm chalking it up to being a little heavy on the cocoa, so you might want to decrease that. No one else commented on it (negatively, that is - there were plenty of compliments), though, so again, this might just be my weird palate trying to sabotage an otherwise enjoyable cake for me.



As you can see, I forgot to take a picture of it until I was staring down at it, half eaten already. So, you won't see a full shot of it, but I did manage to get a few out of the cake the next morning. This way you can also see the inside, which might give you a better idea of how it was constructed (that word you are searching for would be sloppily, I believe). The dimensions weren't as amenable to cutting as I had anticipated, but in the end I don't think that matters so much as long as you can cover it up. And cover it up, I did. By the way, that part of the cake that looks like a chocolate cake layer is not at all a chocolate cake layer. It is a strip of solid chocolate. More on that later.

I would consider using the yellow cake as my go-to birthday cake (although I have too many variations to quite my search just yet), and I'll definitely keep the frosting in my back pocket. Because I didn't alter the recipes at all except to halve the cake, you can follow the links below. The rest of this post will cover how to make the UPS cake specifically, for all of those times that you find yourself in need of one. You're welcome.