Caroline's birthday is in three days.  We are having her party here at the house with friends and family.  I live for this kind of thing; I love to entertain, I love to cook, I am, with all due humility, known for putting on a pretty decent spread for parties.  I was confident that I could crack the code for making not just any egg-free birthday cake, but an egg-free birthday cake that fits in with our party theme: Easter Bunnies and Eggs.  As I write this post, the third attempt at making this cake is baking in the oven and I have, to this point, suffered humiliating defeat and failure.

Let's start at the beginning.  I have gathered over the past several months many key components to a fantastic themed second birthday party.  One of the first items I found and ordered was the cake pan set, from Lillian Vernon, that would be the cornerstone to the whole party.

Cute, right??

The box suggests using a pound cake recipe for the best results, as the cake is more dense and will hold the shape more easily.  Ok, no problemo.  All I needed to do was find a good pound cake recipe and try a couple of different substitution solutions to see which one works best!  After about two minutes of research I realized that most pound cake recipes call for about six eggs.

Six???  Yikes.  Ok, this might be a problem.

A little more in-depth digging yielded a recipe result for vanilla pound cake that calls for only one egg!  Woo hoo!  We were in business.  I decided to try out a new egg replacer product that I found recently, as I really have not loved the Ener-G egg replacer in cakes in the past.  I feel like it has a funny after-taste.

I won't be reviewing this egg replacer right now, however, as I don't think this particular recipe experiment gives it a fair shake.

CAKE NUMER ONE:

The batter was thick, but poured reasonably well.  I was optimistic.

Until I tried to remove the cake from the pan.  Darn.  Cake tasted good, but completely fell apart when I inverted the pan.  Also, the ears looked a little singed.

Nooooo problem!  This was just the first try!  Onward!

CAKE NUMBER 2

I decided to try out an allergen free chocolate cake recipe on the theory that perhaps a pound cake recipe just wasn't conducive to egg fee experimentation.

Okay.  That didn't turn out so well.  Perhaps if I go back to the original pound cake recipe idea and use my tried and true banana-plus-baking powder replacement plan?

Well.  Batter is a little thick.  Ok.  Well, let's give it a whirl.

Yeah, that's not good.  Not really the color one is looking for on a pound cake.  And the immense concave crater in the middle of the cake leaves just a little to be desired.

Time to regroup.  Excuse me while I go pour myself a beverage and consider this problem......

Ok, back now.  After liquid contemplation and a frustrated call to my mommy I have reached the following action plan:

1) I will try to original pound cake recipe using the new egg replacer product, as that cake has been the best thus far, and will use shortening plus flour to line the pans.  I did that for the last two cakes and while the cake itself was a complete disaster in both cases, the cakes did come out of the pan much more cleanly than the first attempt after I did the grease-and-flour routine. So I will try that again.

2) If that fails, then I will be chucking the cake pans in some sort of ritualistic manner that will cleanse me of this experience and then use a bunny cake pattern using two round cakes.  This is, of course, assuming that I can find a recipe that will work well enough in regular round pans.  I have to believe that these failures are at least somewhat pan related.

Right?

Read on for part two of the birthday cake saga!