XXX Sugar...Another Lesson Learned

Lesson #2: XXX Sugar has nothing to do with sex.

So I needed a chocolate cake for a birthday party. Easy, right? Let's just go buy the mix in a box, the frosting in a cardboard can, 30 minutes later, done. But no, I'll make a chocolate cake from scratch just like my granny used to make. How long can it take? How hard can it really be? The recipe looks simple enough, not that many ingredients, I've got my KitchenAid Artisan Standmixer. I can do this. It's not like I'm attempting a ganache or anything (cause I bet that's really hard). Just good ole American chocolate cake.

So the cake part was not especially challenging. Again, thank you KitchenAid. But there were so many moments I was trying to figure out why anyone would make a cake from scratch...I visualized the cake mix aisle at the store, how many different varieties there were, none boasting anything more complicated that opening the bag, adding an egg or two, some vegetable oil, a bit of water, stir, and bake. And they were all moist and delicious, every single one. This cake was shaping up to be like one of those, except for more ingredients and the consistency wasn't really luscious and moist like the others. But I baked them, they came out okay, and my kitchen is now covered in a microthin layer of flour and cocoa powder. I will probably still find that fine layer weeks from now.

So on to the frosting. Even fewer ingredients. I'm in the home stretch. The first ingredient on the list: xxx sugar. Huh. Wonder what that means. I was thinking of Googling it, but was afraid what might come up on my screen. So I just decided it was an old term for sugar, you know, just plain white granulated sugar. Maybe that's what my granny called it. I'm sure everyone but me knows that xxx sugar is confectioner's sugar, or powdered sugar. I had that in my cupboard. I could have taken two extra minutes to call my mom and find out, but no, I had to go with it and just assume. Well, after making the batch of frosting with the wrong sugar and realizing that this was no frosting—gritty brown paste really—I almost ran out to buy the cardboard box frosting and fake it at the birthday party. Instead, I ran to the store to buy more xxx sugar, came home and cleaned out the KitchenAid for the second time, and made a batch of real frosting. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't even that great, but it was from scratch. Cause that's what really matters, right? Huh. Not sure. The birthday boy loved it (or at least that's what he told me to my face) and it looked like a real chocolate cake my granny would have made.