Adventures in baking- or - Bourbon makes everything better

Tonight for dinner, we tried a cafeteria-style middle-eastern restaurant in Montrose. The food was salty, my dolmades were kind of crunchy, and the food made Jon horrifically ill. So ill, in fact, that he is writhing on the couch next to me three hours later. Nothing more to say, except maybe don't take restaurant recommendations from vegetarians, and don't eat at Aladdin.

After said meal, I had a weird craving for cake. I headed to the grocery store, planning on buying a cake mix because it was late and I was feeling lazy, and cake mix is minimally better than grocery store cakes. But I just couldn't do it. I got to the baking aisle, and started inspecting packaging for something at least minimally nutritive and chemical-free. Perhaps I was naive, but there were NONE (save for the equally scary gluten-free mix). So I instead decided to grab some eggs and go make my own, following this recipe. And at that point, the food gods started laughing at me.

I hadn't bothered to check for ingredients before leaving the house, but I knew I had all the basic baking staples. I got home, laid everything out, and started cooking, only to discover:

1. No baking powder.
2. No baking soda to use as a substitute.
3. No vanilla.
4. No milk.
5. Olive oil-flavored Pam
6. Where the hell did my cake pan go!?
7. Why is my butter taking forever to defrost?

But I'm a pretty adventurous cook, and I wanted my damn cake.

So, instead of following the normal recipe, I deviated by:

1. Mixing my half-softened butter and sugar together, forgetting to cream butter first because it was inadequately softened. Oops.
2. Adding only the egg yolks, reserving the whites, fluffed, to stir in at the end in a sad attempt to leaven my cake.
3. Using bourbon instead of vanilla.
4. Adding more bourbon because it wasn't mixing together well.
5. Using (slightly) expired yogurt mixed with water instead of milk.
6. Using a cast-iron skillet to cook the mess.

I cooked it for 45 minutes or so, and was very shocked when it turned out BEAUTIFULLY!! The bourbon gave it a really nice buttery flavor. The texture is a bit more dense than I suspect it would otherwise be, but it's not a problem at all. I iced it with cream cheese frosting (stick of butter, stick of cream cheese, a little superfine sugar) and some cute little star sprinkles. It took longer than cake mix would've, but it's so much better.