Homemade

Today I made a double chocolate cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting.  From scratch.  It's an extra special treat for my family for Valentine's Day.  I've never made a cake from scratch before.  And, I learned a few things:
1.  It makes a huge mess.  Cocoa  powder, powdered sugar, and flour kinda flew everywhere when I turned the mixer on.  This shows my inexperience, as I should have stirred it a bit before mixing it.
2.  When the recipe calls for parchment paper, you can use wax paper.
3.  I'm thankful to have peeps I can call that are professionals in the kitchen when I don't quite understand the recipe.  The icing recipe called for (2) 3 oz packages of cream cheese.  First of all, why didn't they just say 6 oz.?  Secondly,  I shop at Walmart.  And, they only sell cream cheese in 8 oz blocks.  I was sure it was a typo.  But, both Ryan Ledbetter (of Krazy Kookies and Kupcakes) and Aunt Net Hengeveld (of the Downtown Sandwich Shop) confirmed....use the entire 8 oz block of cream cheese. 
4.  It takes a long time to do all that!  Between grating chocolate, measuring and measuring and measuring, mixing in between every little bit, cutting out wax paper just the right size, cleaning, and re-cleaning, icing three layers of cake and all the way around trying to make it look pretty.  I was in the kitchen for four hours.
5.  Unsweetened chocolate is the worst tasting stuff that has ever touched my tongue.
6.  A hand mixer is completely inappropriate and unable to stand up to the challenge of all that mixing.  I burnt the motor out in the very end when I was adding one cup at a time (of 6 cups) of powdered sugar.  I'm so stupid...it would've made so much sense to use that fancy kitchenaid mixer under the cabinet.
7.  It's so damn good!  I'm not going to say it was worth all that work.  But, it would be worth paying someone to do it all for you!
You live and you learn!  Hope your day was as sweet as ours here at Arbor Grove!