The day before my daughter's birthday I began to make the cake. It was simple; the pan set came with a recipe for the 3-layer cake. My only problem was that as I began baking the cake, we had a big thunderstorm. We lost power for about half-an-hour, thus messing up the cake. Time was running out so I had my husband go to the store and purchase a white and a chocolate cake mix. He brought home a yellow cake and a chocolate fudge cake with chocolate pieces in it. Since there were only 3 layers, I put the extra batter into one 8-inch square pan. I froze that cake. The store-bought cakes tasted good enough, but they didn't bake too well. The chocolate batter was much heavier than the yellow cake batter, and they didn't cook evenly.
The only other hurdle was that my daughter wanted her cake to be exactly like the one on the front of the box. The instructions only came with a chocolate icing recipe for the 3-layer cake. The picture shows the cake iced in white frosting with chocolate on the top and dripping down the sides. I just love the Buttercream Recipe I got from Wilton. I made that (the excess icing got frozen, too) and for the chocolate I used the Chocolate Ganache recipe from Marcel Desaulniers' cake recipe. My daughter actually iced her own cake. For an 8-year-old she did pretty good.
You'll find the cake recipe along with how to use the pan on the next page.
