Montana Birthday

Last week I was in Bozeman.  I love it there.  Seriously wonder why I left.  I mean I know why, but seriously would love to go back.  Anyway, I was crashing my friends boys trip, skiing and snowmobiling.  When the guys next door said they wanted to go skiing in Montana, I was all in, without an invitation:)  The lack of true winter here has possibly made this winter more depressing than any real winter ever has been.  Getting to go play in the snow was so wonderful.  To top it off, my wonderful friend Greg who was letting us stay with him, was also celebrating his golden birthday.  This of course meant that I got to make a cake! 

I was flipping through my blog reader when I came across this post on Eat, Live, Run and showed the picture of the strawberries piled on top of the cake to Greg.  He approved and I started looking up recipes for yellow cake.  In the end, since I was not in my own kitchen and short on time, I completely cheated on this cake.  I didn't make anything from scratch. 

 A box of Betty Crocker Super Moist Yellow Cake, Betty Crocker Whipped Butter Cream Frosting. a tub of Cool Whip and some strawberries makes a great cake.  I made the cake in two 9" round pans by the box directions.  While they cooled on a rack, I sliced the strawberries up, just like the picture.  I spread the cool whip on top of one of the cakes and layered strawberries on top with one more layer of cool whip on top of that.  Then I placed the other cake on top and frosted the top and sides with the butter cream frosting.  On top of that I layered the strawberries.  I like to think that it looked good enough to convince people I did bake it from scratch.  

After showing off the cake to Greg and to the boys, we packed everything up to head down to West Yellowstone and tragedy struck.  I wasn't sure if I was mad at Kurt, mad at myself for not doing it myself, or if I wanted to cry.   Kurt carried the cake out to the car with a bowl over the top and some foil to seal it and the plate.  Unfortunately, in away I have yet to figure out, it fell. On the floor of the car.  Some how the plate slide out from the bowl... I'm not really sure, I honestly counldn't figure out how it happened.  1/3 of the cake was on the floor, the rest still had the plate under it, and most of the strawberries on the top were gone.  In my panic to decide what to do, I picked it up and put it back on the plate.  Cleaned off anything that looked suspicious and took it back inside.  Wrapped what was left in plastic wrap so that only a catastrophic fall would cause a second disaster and took it back to the truck.  

Yep.   That's right.  We ate it anyway.  There wasn't any time to do it over again.  Greg was like, 'I already sent a picture to my mom,' so we took it with and ate it.  I got a small rock but otherwise it was fine, I mostly cut only pieces from the side that did not touch the car floor, so maybe the few other pieces that were left had a few other surprises.   In any case, no one has died yet, and Greg said that our day of snowmobiling and finishing the day at the local bar was one of his best in a while.  YEAH! 

The aftermath

Enjoy! (without the rocks!)