This is a beer mug cake for my step-father’s 50th birthday. His party got planned a little last-minute so my mom asked if I could make a simple cake in the shape of the numbers “50.” I agreed, but I had a nagging thought that I owed him more than that for a milestone birthday. So a few days before the event, I changed my mind and whipped this together.

The “foam” is a story all of itself… so I tried a recipe for cloud frosting, which is basically SMBC without the butter. I’d never made this before and here I was, whipping it up the morning of the event (know that if this wasn’t for family, I would NEVER be so caviler!). I got a little impatient waiting for the whites to get to stiff peak—it was taking forEVER!—so I settled for medium. I thought it would be ok. Famous last words, right?

It turns out I made more of a “monster blood” type frosting, or for those of you who never read R. L. Stein as a kid, think slow acting volcanic material. I finished piping the foam in the morning and popped it in the fridge while I switched over to cupcakes. I checked on the cake every now and then and I swore there was a slight but perceivable difference in the placement of the frosting. The foam was less puffy and a tiny bit more settled. It was like it was sinking down and becoming less defined. It was actually ok in the beginning—it made the foam look better because you couldn’t see every individual blob that I pipped. But even by the time I took the cake to photography, I could definitely tell that all the foam—not just the foam on the top—was sinking down. Slowly, but it was sinking.

I watched the progression of the foam over the next several hours, and it was actually pretty hilarious. The beer was getting more and more foamy! By the end of the night, almost the entire beer mug was covered in foam! Part of me was mortified, but In a way, it was perfect—I made a beer mug cake with foam that was reacting like foam really does! The downside: messiest cake I have EVER cut :)