Mini birthday cakes

My birthday was last week. And unless I want a cake from WalMart or an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen (which sometimes I do), I need to bake my own cakes.

(Don’t tell Hubby Doc, but I really don’t mind all that much. I do love to complain about it though.)

And, I will freely admit, I am a bake-it-from-a-box-mix kind of girl. I want to be a bake-it-from-scratch kind of girl, but I’m just not. And that’s the way it is.



I did want to try something a little different this year, though. I’ve done the round 2-layer cakes, which are fine. I’ve done 9x13 cakes, which are kind of boring. I’ve done cupcakes, and I just make a giant mess.
I’ve had this Pampered Chef stoneware mini loaf pan sitting in my cabinet in our (temporary) apartment for months, and haven’t used it yet. So I thought I would try making mini red velvet cakes this year!

The batter fit perfectly into the four mini-loaf sections. I had to experiment a bit to figure out how long to cook them. I tried the shortest cupcake time, not really expecting them to be done, but I thought this would give me a pretty good idea of how much longer they needed to stay in the oven.

After 20 minutes on 325, they were starting to set on the outsides, but still very jiggly in the middle. (Think Jello.)



Ten minutes more and they started to look better, but the magic toothpick test said they were not ready yet.



Ten more minutes (40 minutes total), and they were ready.



I cooled them on a rack for a while before I iced them. (Truthfully, I got playing writing on the computer and forgot about them for about an hour and a half before I got back.)



I iced them up with some whipped white frosting (yes, from a can), and they were done!



I will admit, they turned out just a touch dry. I wish I had baked them for five minutes less. But, overall, for my first try at cake in a mini-loaf pan, I was pretty pleased! Next time, bake for 35 minutes at 325 degrees. (If you’re not baking in stoneware, you’ll need even less bake time – the stone takes longer to heat up than metal pans.)