It's Sunday, or, How the Hell Did I Make a Gray Cake?

So two of the four Thompsons are coming over this afternoon and I said I would make cake. I decided to try the Red Waldorf recipe in the BH & G canonical cookbook and unfortunately ran out of red food coloring. Thinking creatively, I decided to add blue for a nice purple effect. Unfortunately, adding blue to a bit of red and a lot of unsweetened cocoa powder turned the batter into an attractive gunmetal gray. I thought it would bake out. It didn't.

My solution was to make the outside of the cake as pretty as I could with store-bought frosting and some sprinkles and hope that my guests won't notice that the cake they are eating is as gray as Lenin in his mausoleum.

On the flip side, I strayed away from my rule of "children must have hot breakfasts every day" and let the kids have donuts. Here's the evidence.