It started off like any other red velvet cake. I followed the directions on the Duncan Hines box mix to create delicious red batter, greased the pan, and baked the cakes to perfection. Although I had a bit of trouble getting them out of the pan and neatly stacked, this part of the process went relatively well. Then disaster ensued.
As much as I would have liked to have made the entire cake from scratch, I decided that for economic purposes, I should settle for only making the icing. After all, I have made icing multiple times prior to this occasion, and it seemed sure to be the easier feat. Granted, I hadn't made cream cheese icing, but how hard could it be? It only had four ingredients. [See recipe below]
Of course, being the health-conscious cook that I am, I typically only keep fat-free cream cheese in my refrigerator. Why have full-fat ingredients hanging around when I can purchase something that saves fat and calories for the same price?
This is why.
As it turns out, the fat in the full-fat cream cheese does serve a purpose: to thicken the icing. Without it, no matter how long you refrigerate or freeze the icing (I froze it overnight), it still falls into a droopy mess of sticky liquid (albeit delicious sticky liquid, but sticky liquid nonetheless). After five attempts at icing the cake, I finally was able to cover it completely, though, as you can see, the obvious layers were still blatantly observable.
The good news, however, is that, despite the disastrous icing, the cake still tasted perfectly delicious.
Clearly we had no trouble cutting into it. :-)
So, boys and girls, here is the lesson for today - When baking, always use as much fat as possible. Period.
[Cream Cheese Icing]
2 8-oz. packages of cream cheese - FULL FAT
1 stick butter
3 c. powdered sugar
2 T. vanilla
Beat cream cheese and butter together. Add remaining ingredients and beat together until smooth.
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