The slow sliding death of cake

Today was Phoenix's birthday...his 1/2 birthday this is. And now I have a kid running around my house who is almost 2. When did this happen? I mean I knew 2 was coming because he's gotten the eye roll down AND the folding of the arms whenever I tell him no or he gets pissed (and boy he gets pissed a lot!). If I ever wonder if he's mine I can just check the attitude.

But I really wanted to do something special for his birthday. For the last couple weeks he has become obsessed with Nemo. I mean I put it on in the AM turn the sound down and let it loop all day. Now before I get a bunch of comments about letting him watch TV all day. Rest assured it's not 12 hours of straight TV watching. 

I like background noise and would rather have a kid show on while he's up then a bunch of loud commercials, talk shows, or my soaps. So we put movies in and he'll take a few 5 minute breaks here and there to watch it. Now that we're potty training this helps even more.

But nevertheless this one is his favorite to watch. He also loves dogs, but we've been down that path before so I decided to get him a fish. I really want a big goldfish or lots of little tiny ones but the people at Pet Smart said that we need a big heated tank to make that happen. And really I'm not sure If I'm going to invest in something he might not like.

So we got a simple Beta fish that we named Nemo, but we call him Mo because thats all Phoenix can say. He's pretty cute with "Mo" he'll go up and kiss the glass and wave buh-bye to him. And will call "Mo! Mo!" when's he looking for him.

Anyhow I decided to just do a cake for today since Mo seemed like a good enough present. And then I stumbled upon Remodelaholic's blog and she just so happened to have just celebrated her little girls 1/2 birthday as well.

She made her a half a cake in celebration and I thought the idea was adorable....

So I set out to make it and this is what I ended up with....

We put one candle and cut on in half.

As soon as I put the icing on it started spilling off and the top part started sliding off. Shawn's first instinct was to use bamboo skewers to stick in it to hold it up...didn't work. I then immediately popped it in the freezer because I thought it needed to harden. But after opening the freezer less then 5 minutes later I realized I had just made it in time to stop it from sliding again!

Once I sliced it, it looked slightly better...but not much.

I've always tried to remain completely transparent in my blogging and I really debated about sharing this with you because I was totally humiliated!

I don't know why but I decided I wanted to make the cake from scratch. Why I continue to torture myself with baking recipes I'll never know. I'm not a baker, never have been. Baking is scientific and mathematical and that is not me. But I continue to press on. I guess I figure if I can get this down it will justify this purchase.

But I just can't get it. Why I didn't just get a Betty Crocker box and icing I'll never know. Maybe it's all the blog envy I have from the super talented and crafty bloggers out there...but I tried....

I'm not sure if the icing wasn't stiff enough, cake wasn't cool enough or that you can't cut a cake in half and sit it on top of the other.No idea but it was a big fail in the presentation department. 

Loved the taste (used this for the cake and this one for the icing), but when it comes to looks I think I've let my Martha down.

Midnight is the very last moment to enter into the giveaways so please do so! The winners will be announced Wednesday morning!