Happy Birthday Dad

I decided to make a birthday cake for day last night to take to work today - Oct 14th is his birthday and he loved sweets. I'm calling this cake "Murphy" because anything that could go wrong in making this cake, did go wrong.

It was supposed to be a flag cake but I was hesitant with using too much food dye that the layers ended up more like pink and aqua. The layers wouldn't come out of the pans so they were broken in the process which is probably a major contributor to it falling apart.

For some odd reason, the middle layer ended up wider than the other two layers (the undyed layer of white cake). I didn't know until I layered it and it hung over the lower level. Tried to fill in the gap with frosting but the frosting had it's own issues.

Made a whip crema frosting but when I folded in the whipped cream it curdled from the key lime juice in the buttercream mixture. I've made this before with those green limes without this problem but the key limes were a problem.

No sooner had I assembled the cake and it began to fall apart in the fridge.

My dad would have grinned, taken a bite, and said it tastes good to him!