Like bordering on unhealthy obsessive love.
I can't even count how many vanilla-scented things like candles and oils and such that we have in our house.
Not to mention the fact that my pantry has—at any given time—at least three or four bottles, jars, and tubes of various vanilla extracts, pure or otherwise, pods and beans. Why? Because whenever she is out grocery shopping she has a panic attack that this day, today, might be THE DAY. The day we ran out of vanilla. So she buys more.
She's gone on 10-minute-long monologues about how vanilla is treated unfairly, and why, oh why, has vanilla become synonymous in our society with 'plain'? "IT ISN'T PLAIN AT ALL, IT TASTES LIKE VANILLA!!!"
Anyway... she likes vanilla.
:)
So, it shouldn't come as any surprise that one of her favourite desserts is good ol' vanilla cake.
So, for her birthday, and dessert for her birthday dinner, I whipped up my signature very vanilla cake with extra vanilla.
It's essentially a classic yellow sheet cake, with extra vanilla.
You don't even need to alter the recipe, really.
Just when it calls for like a tablespoon of vanilla, use four. Yup.
If you need to add a splash more flour, go ahead, but you probably won't.
My stupid spring-form bake pan broke. DURING baking. Sigh.
A large amount of batter dripped out and fell to the bottom of the oven before I could catch it and fix it. It was swell.
So, even though this was only two-thirds of a vanilla cake, it was still enough for the two of us for a week.
The fix for a broken spring form bake pan, you ask? Well, I didn't really fix it entirely, but for the baking process, I hastily placed a baking sheet underneath it so that the leak would shore itself sort of thing, after a minute or two.
And it did. It sort of created a clot on the leak, which itself got really burnt, but was easy to just rip off after.
All in all, it actually turned out well.
A little on the shallow side, but hey, for two-thirds of one sheet of cake (sheet cake is intended to be layered, in case you didn't know, but that makes for a ginormous cake).
I let that cool for a good hour or so, and then spread on top a generous amount of my home-made butter cream very vanilla icing.
This is easy.
Whip butter, icing sugar, a pinch of salt, and many spoonfuls of vanilla together until frothy!
You can put it in the fridge to harden a bit, but I like to spread it while it's super soft.
Mmmmmmmm...
After frosting, I let it sit on my windowsill while we ate supper.
To me, the vanilla can be a little strong, but the wife absolutely LURVS this cake.
So it was a success.
