LET THEM EAT CAKE! - Oops - wrong revolution, Still: CAKE!

Red Velvet.  I'm still perfecting it - so I'm not going to put the recipe up yet, but I couldn't possibly let a great title like that slip through my fingers.

Here she is - a grand old Lady:

My cake decorating skills leave a lot to be desired, I know.  Usually I'm a little better, but I was rushed last night because the girls had their own plans for fireworks and the like and I was trying to get at least one daughter (and her friend) to eat a hamburger so I wouldn't have to receive the, "Mom, I've got a bad headache can you pick me up NOW," call.  I hate that call - because if they'd only listened to me and had a little food...

Who am I kidding?  They don't listen to me.  They're 12 and 14.  In ten years they might be ready to listen to me but until then I do my best to speak through their father (for whom they still have a bit of respect.)

We had fun this Fourth.  Mads, her dad and I went to the usual parade - with the ooompa loompa band:

they old timey cars:

Plus your usual panoply of kids on bikes, floats made by parents featuring their infants, politicians (some more smarmy and blown dry than others) - police cars and fire trucks.  The guy on stilts was there, as he is every year as well as the creepy, yet still somehow cool horse drawn hearse from the historic grave yard that borders our town.  This is the very same hearse used in the 1800s to carry those who could afford it to their eternal resting places:

See what I did here - used my camera+ to make it LOOK old timey

even though I took these pictures yesterday- because I'm clever that way.  (Love those horses)

Any way - even though I'm still working on my red velvet cake recipe (because frankly the one above was a bit dry) - I'll give you the method - (because everyone has this recipe) - for creating my awesome cream cheese frosting with which I frosted my July 4 cake:

Super Fluffy Cream Cheese Frosting:

3 cups of powdered sugar

2 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter room temp

tsp of good vanilla (the best you can afford)

pinch of salt (just regular old table salt, not sea salt)

1 package of cream cheese - room temp as well - chopped up into bits about a table spoon in size

Sift the powered sugar.  Sift it again.  And just to be on the safe side, sift it one more time.  The main thing here is no lumps.  At all.  I mean it.  If you see a lump sift it.  Put your butter in a standing mixer if you have one - although a hand held is fine, it's just more boring because you have to whip the heck out of the butter - you just leave it in the bottom of the mixer getting all whipped up by the mixer until it's light and incredibly fluffy - then add the sugar about a cup at a time - letting it get all whipped into the butter before adding more.  When all the sugar is whipped add the vanilla and pinch of sugar then add the cream cheese a block at a time until it is all incorporated and very very whipped.  

Every time I write the word whipped I keep thinking that there's got to be a joke in there somehow involving Paris Hilton or a Kardashian - but I can't do it because I'm not a guy.  

Anyway - when all your cream cheese is incorporated and, well, whipped, you will have the lightest most yummy cream cheese frosting ever.  And if you want to make it chocolate, just swap out 1/2 cup of cocoa powder for 1/2 cup of sugar and sift, sift, sift and mix like mad.  People will love it.  Even if your  cake is a little dry.  

Happy 4th. Yay US.