You smell like a monkey and you bake like one too!

What's worse than having to bake your own birthday cake? A birthday cake is, I suppose, the most basic form of birthday present you can get - other than a card perhaps - so it is a little bit (which here means 'very') sad to spend your time on your birthday baking your own cake. Yet I knew that this would end up happening when I set out to do this challenge so I can hardly grumble.
Today, just like any other day, has seen me occupying my time by baking; it also just so happens to be my birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME!

- I suppose that baking your own birthday cake is pretty sad but wishing yourself happy birthday is really taking the biscuit... If only I'd sent myself a card just to trump myself on the sadness scale. -

Yet, in answer to the almost rhetorical question I opened this post with, I can tell you for definite what is worse than baking your own birthday cake... That is definitely breaking it in half during the cooking process.
Yep, that's right, the last few days' baking have been largely successful and often outstanding... But my birthday cake just had to go wrong or it just wouldn't be right. So I set out to make my Chocolate Mint Sponge Cake (Mint Chocolate is my favourite) with hopes rather high, it wasn't an overly complicated recipe, just a normal sponge cake with a few bits of Matchmakers chocolate scattered in the mix and to decorate.

However, I made two crucial and devastating mistakes. One: I used cake tins without the handy removable bottom (it's just so much easier to separate it from the tin) and Two: I probably didn't grease the tins as well as I should have. One plus Two makes three... three pieces to a two piece cake. I was distraught.

I literally whined like a baby when the cake split. I may have turned twenty today but believe me, the sound which escaped my lips would be about the same as if you stole a lollipop from a three year old girl. I almost didn't know what to do, frustration could have kicked in - which would almost definitely have resulted in no cake at all and a large pile of crumbs with a rolling pin sitting in the middle - but I remained calm.

The solution was simple, I just used the icing I was about to put in the middle of the cake to glue the parts back together and then decorated it as normal. Honestly I don't think you'd be able to guess if you hadn't heard your dogs barking and cats meowing because they could hear my ultra-sonic high pitch cry of despair... or read my post!

The Result: 

Mmmm Broken

Mmmm Disguisey...