One beautiful, sloppy mess

What usually happens when you get yourself into something that's way out of your league?

A disaster.

I baked an Ube (Purple Yam) Chiffon Cake today. Some of you might find the idea of a cake like this a little weird.  This is in fact widely popular in the Philippines and it's one of my personal favourites.  I have actually been dreaming of making one for a very long time.  

It started out as a simple plan in my head...to bake a soft, light chiffon cake that will be cleanly frosted with whipped cream.   I had told you time and again that I was no good at cake decorating so really, I had to keep it plain.

After baking the cake, things started to go differently though.  One change came after another.  First of all, I had extra grated purple yam left so I thought, why not make a cake filling out of it? 

I decided against cutting the cake in half afterwards.  That filling eventually became the cake border.  But the problem was that it was a bit runny...I figured it would be best to just spread it out like a topping.  That topping eventually became a part of the frosting. 

I am not going to pretend that I knew what I was doing. Really, I had no idea.  What I was left at that point was one big, sloppy mess of a cake.

But I wasn't about to give up.  I had to go by my instincts and turn this disaster around with my creativity.

I played with the frosting a bit more until I was finally satisfied.

So here it is...my birthday cake. 

I suppose it didn't turn out to be a disaster after all.

It's my birthday today, by the way.


PS. We'll eat this later...if it turns out as yummy as I am imagining it to be, I might even share the recipe....

UPDATE: We just ate the cake... 

It is absolutely lovely!