cream cheese frosting with fresh orange zest + raspberries

Sometimes food bloggers relent on their promise to always make things from scratch. Sometimes, they find themselves in the midst of deadlines and projects and indoor soccer tryouts for their 5 year olds. Perhaps they realize that they’ve over booked and over extended themselves yet again. And although somewhere in their scattered minds they had planned an elaborate birthday dinner for their first-born, they realize they forgot about the most pivotal thing of all.

The Birthday Cake.

They come to terms with the fact that they had spent so much time trying to make all of their childs favorite foods, that they failed to recognize that their favorite food is in fact...cake.

And what does one do when they realize that they are out of butter and sugar and cocoa powder? Is a cake even feasible at that point? The answer was a resounding no. A nine-year olds birthday just wasn’t the time to make healthy spice cake sweetened only with apple sauce. 

But wait.

There is a reason why, in the midst of frantic grocery shopping, on days I absolutely don’t have time to grab any more than a mere carton of milk, that I leap forth and throw packaged goodies into my cart. It doesn’t happen very often but when it does, I know it’s the universe’s way of telling me: You might just need this some day. Trust me. I love that the universe takes care of me this way.

And so instead of throwing in the towel, instead of giving up and telling your daughter that there will in fact, be no fragrant smell of cake coming out of the oven, you search your small pantry for something, anything that can come to your rescue.

And then you see it.

A hidden little gem in the form of a cake box with the words ‘golden delicious” sprawled across it. Ready in 25 minutes and no need for sugar or cocoa. And horray for oil in place of butter. 

But there is one thing I could not skimp on. Homemade frosting with cream cheese, vanilla, whipped cream and orange zest. Sure, refined white sugar would have been a nice touch but it wasn’t in the cards for me that day. This post then will not be about boxed cake mix, but rather the super simple frosting that I use almost every time I make a cake. Sometimes I add orange or lemon zest and other times cocoa powder. It’s also completely delicious on its' own without any add ins at all.

It wasn’t the way I imagined my daughter’s birthday cake but she loved it anyway and that’s what really matters. Did I secretly cheer at the fact that she ate around the cake and licked the frosting clean? Perhaps just a wee bit. 

But mostly, this cake served its’ purpose. It was a platform upon which to place nine beautiful candles. A vehicle for making wishes and singing birthday songs. And sometimes sanity and time management takes precedence right? Am I right folks? 

If you ever find yourself without a single moment to spare, do not fret. Pull out all the stops on the frosting, and go ahead and cheat with a boxed cake mix. No reason to feel guilty. And whoever said homemade cake = love obviously didn’t know what they were talking about.

Homemade cream cheese frosting = love.

Everyone knows that.

Comments

[Queen]

This is a recipe I'm keeping!! (And you make me laugh... practically everything comes out of a box in this house and around here... a cake mix IS homemade. Hey, I didn't buy it at the store did I??) xo