That Magnificent Lunar Cake

In honor of the Apollo 11 moon landing 40 years ago, Rebecca, Philip and I decided to bake a moon cake.
Apparently Rebecca and Philip have never made a cake before. I could blame this entire cake fiasco on them, but then again it turned out pretty well, so I'd like to take a share of the blame, too. We started out with some cake mix, mixing it together. Unfortunately while I made Philip hold the egg yolk I had sifted, he was slowed down so as to miss the point at which the butter should have been taken out of the microwave, and our butter melted.

But we continued on, just as Neil Armstrong continued on by manually piloting the Apollo 11 when the autopilot was going to land them in a rocky zone. We baked the cake in two layers because the only suitable pans we could fine were very thin, but we figured this way we could frost between the layers. Next, on to the frosting! I had bought vanilla frosting mix, though I prefer chocolate, because I thought it looked more moon-like. However, we all decided we wanted chocolate, so in the entrepreneurial spirit of the astronauts, we decided to add cocoa powder to the frosting.

It worked pretty well! Although, the cake kind of came apart when we were putting it together, we frosted it enough that it looked decent. Then we decided to make craters. We accomplished this by sticking the teaspoon and tablespoon measuring spoons into the top.





































We added rays to the craters using uncooked spaghetti.

I'd be concerned if it were a regular cake, but for a moon cake, it was one magnificent lunar cake. (Of course that does not mean we can now divide the cake up for European colonization—the space treaty prohibits that, for one!)

And what cake would be complete without Neil Armstrong, the lunar module, and the American flag?


Sachi