I really should have baked Tuesday. Note to self. Because I started baking tonight for a baby shower cake for my SIL for Saturday afternoon. Orange dreamsicle- so I used my go-to vanilla cake and just subbed melted orange sherbet and mandarin orange juice from draining the can instead of milk. I've done that before and it turned out just fine! (I did do them as cupcakes so maybe I just didn't know it would do this.) At the end I mixed in a can of drained mandarin oranges. Baked it as a 1" layer, in my 11x15 pan, which I've never had a problem with my cakes holding up when I do that. Get it out on the rack, just fine.

It's when I went to move the cake into a large ziploc bag for the freezer... the darn layer fell apart! It's pretty much crumbs in a bag! I had another whole layer of the exact same recipe about to come out of the oven, and the cake was sitting on top of the stove, so maybe the layer had stayed too warm. I don't know. But I had to run to the store at 10:30 pm to get more stuff because I have to try again with a different recipe now.

I guess this is why you should bake well in advance! *thuds head repeatedly against the wall in frustration and fatigue...*

I will now be experimenting with cake pops. Orange cake, cream cheese frosting, and milk chocolate covering... Can't let all that yummy cake go to waste! Even though I just want to cry.

That's a shame. I had the same thing happen with a 12 inch layer. Made cake balls out of most of it and the rest I put into bowls with some buttercream and sprinkles and my son and his buddies devoured it. My son's friend said anytime I "mess up a cake" to give him a call

LOL! Finally figured out why the recipe was behaving differently from all the other times I have made it. I was so tired last night that I misread 1 STICK of butter, for 1 CUP of butter! Yeah, it made that big of a difference. All the layers that I baked kept falling apart, so I finally quit at the wee hours and went to bed. Looked at the recipe this morning and was so mad! Now I have to rebake all over again... Because if I try to stack them frozen, they'll just fall apart when they thaw out and my cake will implode.

Oh well, lesson definitely learned!

*as I wrote this, my son got up on the table and dug his spoon into the cooling cake. you've got to be kidding me.....