Tempting Tuesday: trying not to kill my family with my experimental cooking.
My new 'Tempting Tuesday' series is supposed to be for my cooking/baking experiments. However, this week's endeavour went a little sour, so I thought I'd include it regardless, mostly for comedy value but also as a 'how NOT to'.
It's so not in my nature to give up but maybe I should give up baking, at least until I can be better prepared. I should have given up on this cake before it went in the oven. Before I wasted two bars of chocolate on it.
My baby sister turns 21 this week and she asked me to make her a chocolate cake for her tea party. Despite having a new baby, I decided to say I would. I should have said no, but it's my baby sister, how could I?
Even the ingredient are messed up, because as I was making it I forgot to exchange some of the flour with cocoa powder to make it chocolatey. Thankfully, I have a side note in my recipe book which splits the ingredients by a third, so I just added another third, making it a rather large cake.
Large cakes aren't a large problem with my family.
Unless it tastes like shit of course.
So, the ingredients were as follows;
13oz plain flour
3oz cocoa
8oz sugar
6tsp baking powder
8oz butter
4 eggs
140ml milk
Filling; whipped double cream with 200g melted chocolate folded in.
Topping; (and this is where it goes completely awry)
150g butter
150g sugar (SHOULD HAVE BEEN ICING SUGAR but I had a brain malfunction)
200g melted chocolate
I got all my ingredients together at 5pm.
Zander, the four week old baby decided he didn't ever want to be put down, so my ingredients were sieved and weighed in sporadic intervals. Then I realised I had to cook the bigger boys dinner by 6pm and get them to bed by 7pm - alone as Mr Strawberry was working late.
By 8:30pm, after three attempts at frying it due to the un-put-down-able baby, I had managed to have a bacon sandwich for dinner.
I finally found some cake tins of similar size and got this fucking cake in the oven by 9:30pm, when Mr Strawberry finally got home. At 10pm, it was finally yielding a clean knife when I poked it, so I threw a fresh tea-towel over both the tins and went to bed.
The next morning I set out to decorate it. Not putting it in a sealed box overnight of course meant it was a little dry. I should have known how bad it was going to be because when I was adding the whipped cream and chocolate in between the layers, it was all a bit too easy, with none of the tentative 'oh god the cake is going to split' as I lifted each cake layer.
I had already whisked the sugar into the butter before I realised the consequences of using the wrong sugar. Durrrrrrr. Gritty much. By then, it was too late, like running down a hill, there was no way of stopping now. So I threw the melted chocolate in regardless and chucked it on the cake. As I lovingly (begrudgingly) smoothed the 'butter icing' over the cake, my darling Mr Strawberry wondered in and kindly told me (knowing the issues I was having) it was a 'gallant effort'. I was going to make a nice cereal box cardboard stencil to use while sprinkling on the gold glitter sugar but by then there seemed no point trying to improve this monstrosity so I carefully sprinkled it on by hand, making a delightful '21'.
Of course everyone at the tea party was very polite, those who weren't chocca full of party food and braved a slice, said it was lovely, but I tried some myself and I can honestly say, it wasn't worth the calorie intake. I was tempted to dollop on some cream to add some sense of moisture, but I never bothered.
This cake and me, we're not friends, despite how much chocolate it contains.
So, here's my how NOT to bake guide;
1. Don't bother to make sure you have everything you need before starting.
2. By all means, attempt to bake while looking after 3 children, including a newborn, without another adult to help.
3. Always attempt to make a very special cake during dinner time or bedtime, or both for maximum effect.
4. Always bake past your bedtime.
5. It's okay to substitute icing sugar for normal sugar, not gritty at all.
6. Forget when you put the cake in the oven.
7. Leave cake out overnight to dry.
8. Decorate with glitter sugar sprinkles, those things will go a long way in disguising how gritty your butter icing is.
 |
| Gritty butter icing. |
Mmmm, so dry and crumbly.
Sorry Baby Belle :(
*****************UPDATE**************
I just had to share the lovely thing my Mum posted on Facebook.
"Actually, lots of us went back for seconds. The butter icing is a little, er, unusual but the cake is yummy & not dry at all. What really mattered to the birthday girl is that her big sister made her a cake, despite having a new baby. Loving people is what really matters & that's what you've done."
And she's right you know. It doesn't matter if we cock up, it's all about the trying and the loving people.
