Bitter Late Than Never!

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Okay, so the cartoon/comic-style cake trend was all over the place in November and December, and has slowed down since the holidays, so I am extremely late to this party. But a cake where you don’t have to worry about precision accuracy, the cleanest of lines, and the smoothest of frostings? I’m in. So I may be late, but bitter late than never. I thought it would be funny to make a lemon cake and design it as a Valentine’s cartoon cake style because I am a bitter human being that doesn’t actually celebrate the holiday (the chocolate and floral industry can’t pull one over on me)…so a sour-flavored cake just rings true to how I feel about Hallmark’s attempts to make me a romantic. Also, my lovely coworkers gifted me with ALL. THE. SPRINKLES. for my birthday, including a large set of V. Day sprinkles, so I figured this was a pretty good use for them. I may hate Valentine’s Day, but damned if I don’t love a good cake sprinkle more than anything else.

If the Powerpuff Girls made a cake, this would be that cake. And Mojo Jojo would spend an entire episode trying to figure out how to steal it because it is DELICIOUS. It’s a Funfetti lemon cake because I wanted both a cartoony exterior and interior, and nothing says comic yum like a Funfetti cake. The lemon cream cheese frosting is also to die for; I used a bit of citric acid to make the frosting less sweet (think Sour Patch Kids meets Dunkaroo Dip- a 90s kid’s nostalgia factory, if you will). Basically, this cake is a lemony burst of flavor that makes my bitter little heart a titch less sour. Every time I open the fridge and see how cartoonish and ridiculous it looks sitting next to regular, real-life food, it’s delightful. And at only 259 calories a slice (10 slices total), you can squeeze the day (and not your waist)!

Okay, rationing eggs in this economy would probably be wise, but then I wouldn’t have cake, so here we are. For the lemon Funfetti cake, you need:

• 1 box of gluten free Funfetti cake mix (or regular Funfetti cake mix if not gluten free)
• 3 eggs (sorry, I know that’s like $50 worth of eggs today)
• 70 grams (1/3 cup) unsweetened applesauce
• 1 cup skim or fat free milk
• 1 tsp lemon extract

Preheat your oven to 350 and prepare three 6-inch round cake pans with cooking spray and bake even strips. Add all cake ingredients into a stand mixer, blending on low for one minute before switching to medium high for two minutes. Pour batter evenly into each pan and bake for 32-35 minutes. A toothpick should come out of the center of the cake clean. Let rest in the pan for 10 minutes before turning out to cool completely on a cooling rack before frosting.

Anything that says it can be used for cleaning and eating gives me pause, but I read that citric acid can balance out the super sweetness of frosting, so I had to try. I figured if it killed me, I’d go out eating cake, which, truly, seems appropriate. While your cakes cool, you can make the frosting. You’ll need:

• 225 grams (8 ounces) of 1/3 the fat cream cheese, softened
• 226 grams (1 cup) of fat free Greek yogurt, strained overnight to remove moisture
• 16 ounces (4 cups) Lakanto powdered monkfruit or regular powdered sugar
• 1 tsp lemon extract
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/8 tsp citric acid
• 1-2 TBS milk

Whip the cream cheese and yogurt with a paddle attachment in your stand mixer until fluffy, about three minutes. Add in half the monkfruit, citric acid, and both extracts. Blend well, then scrape the bowl before adding the remaining monkfruit and 1 TBS milk; if the frosting is too stiff, add another TBS milk. To assemble, you just need to slather a layer of buttercream on top of a cooled cake layer, then add another layer (I always place them face down so the smooth surface on the bottom of the cake is now on top), then place the final layer on top. Then coat the side (but not the top) of the cake with plain white frosting. Citric acid also makes frosting BLINDINGLY WHITE (like ‘my legs in the winter’ level of white), which again, gave me pause, because what is it going to do to my insides if it bleaches my frosting?

Instead of wondering whether my intestines and stomach needed to prepare for bleaching, I gathered up some hot pink, red, and black gel dyes and rounded up the Valentine’s sprinkles. I divided my frosting into thirds, a larger heaping to dye hot pink, and two smaller heaps to dye black and red. I loaded my pink frosting into a piping bag with a #12 round tip, my black frosting into a piping bag with a #5 tip (I also had my #3 and #2 tips on hand to swap out), and my red frosting into a piping bag with a 2D tip (1M would also work). That little tool you see in the middle above is a grabber that works EXCELLENTLY to place sprinkles onto a cake; big ups to my boss for sending that in my birthday gift…it is truly my new favorite thing ever. It also works well to threaten husbands out of the kitchen and away from your bowl of frosting, FYI.

I topped my cake with a bit of pink frosting, smoothed, and then froze the whole thing for 20 minutes so my frosting would crust. I smoothed out any bumps on the cake with a plain Viva paper towel after this.

Then I came in with the pink frosting and #12 tip, and outlined “drips” down the side of the cake before filling in the outlines with more pink frosting. Then I smoothed out the pink to my liking; some texture makes it look more comical. I added in some black outlining on the top and the bottom around the cake. You don’t need to make a completely connected circle. Breaking it up a little into smaller sections of outlining adds to the cartoon effect.

Now, outline the drips with more black frosting. I added in a few “shadows” of overlapping black. Then I used my sprinkle grabber to put red hearts all over the side of the cake. I outlined these with a #3 tip in little sections; some went all around the hearts, others outlined in little chunks.

Once I finished outlining all the hearts, I took tiny pink heart sprinkles and placed them all over the rest of the background of the cake. The sprinkle grabber came in clutch here; if I do have a Valentine this year, it’s that sprinkler grabber…I am in looooove. Then I finished the cake off by drawing little red swirls with my 2D tip on the top of the cake. I froze this for 15 minutes before coming in with black frosting and a #2 tip to outline the waves on the swirls. I do have a quick video on my Instagram of the design process as well.

If any at point your frosting starts to get too soft, throw it in the freezer for 5-10 minutes to firm up. But truly, I had this cake decorated in about 10 minutes minus the breaks to freeze sections. It was so easy and SO much fun. I am glad I jumped on this trend before it completely disappeared. I like to think of myself as trend-aware, but I guess I’m slipping in my old age…

Look, I’m not one to heart-iculate my emotions, but I am so grateful my work fam sent me all these sprinkles to use for my bakes for my birthday a few weeks ago. I’ve got some stellar ideas coming up for another Valentine’s bake and some Mardi Gras bakes (we’re here to party mardi!). But right now, I’m just a girl, standing in front of a cake, asking it to let her eat it…because it is so zesty and delicious. Since it’s citrus-based, I’ve also been having it with breakfast. I am excelling at adulthood in my mid 30s, let me tell you. But trust me, if you had a slice, you’d be right there with me on Team Breakfast Cake. As far as I know, the citric acid hasn’t eaten a hole in my gut or bleached my internal organs, so I am definitely using this again to lessen the sweetness of buttercream frostings. I love a good science experiment that doesn’t end in near disaster. You know, like when Professor Utonium mixed sugar, spice, and everything nice but accidentally added in Chemical X and made the Powerpuff girls. Okay, we’ve gone full circle, so… Til next time, my fellow eaters!

Recipe and Instructions