So, who thought I would be able to make a fantastic cake on the first run?
Don't feel bad- I didn't think I would be able to either. And I didn't.
It was a long day at work, and then I was caught in a pretty bad thunder storm so our first concern was whether or not the electricity was even on at our place (about one third of the town was dark). Once we found out we were ok on that front we just crossed our fingers that the flickering lights wouldn't dim permanently and went for it.
Of course, I took pictures for everyone so if you need a good laugh just scroll to the bottom and see the final product- LOL!!!
As a reminder- the cake is an
orange pound cake recipe that I found onlineLets take this step by step-
Preheat oven: no problems there.
Grease and lightly flour the pan: is there a non-messy way to do this? I had flour everywhere!
Line the bottoms of the pan with parchment paper: I seriously thought the only use for this was to make homemade patterns. No joke. I never wondered why this was sold near the groceries and not the craft section. And we didn't have any anyhow so whatever. This was skipped.
Mixing the eggs and sugar- not too bad. But while my mixer was going to work (yeah, I am a non-baker who has a mixer) I realized that I had no idea how to make orange zest.
So I took a potato peeler to shave off some larger chunks of the peel. Then I took a knife and chopped until the eggs were done beating:
Does that look like zest to you? I have no idea what zest is suppose to look like.
Why do so many ingredients have to be at room temperature? The eggs were not room temperature. And I didn't have extra large- so I added an egg and they came straight from the fridge.
This is what the batter looked like when I was done:
Notice anything goofy? I didn't either.
So I put the batter in the preheated oven, and shared the beaters with hubby. And then the bowl. Yeah- we eat batter with raw eggs over here, pretty bad ass right?
OMG- this batter was YUMMY!!!
Proof that flour was everywhere. Hubby decided not to let me know about the flour on my nose until he was taking the photo. Jerk.
While this was going on I made the fondant. This was what I was expecting to be a disaster. Of course I didn't take any pictures because I was sure that I was going to have to redo it that night anyhow.
It went fine. Messy as all get out while you are waiting for it to firm up, and it took an extra pound of sugar than the recipe called for but it turn out perfectly! I was so happy.... until I took the cake out of the oven.
The middle in all the pans had sunk like the Titanic!!! No joke, it was horrible. I was going to take a picture but the middle managed to rip before I could and so hubby made me step away from it.
All the cake was in pieces.
Apparently me swearing at the cake "wasn't going to help". I prefer the saying "you never know until you try" but the cake needed to cool anyhow.
After an hour or so we went back and tried to salvage the cake.
This is what we came up with.
That is one attractive cake huh?
More importantly, we tried some of the chunks that were (still) falling off... and it was also delish! Just like the batter- it was soooooooo yummy!!!!
The fact that the cake at least tasted awesome gave us the motivation to "dirty frost" so the fondant would stick
And take the fondant out of the fridge
And realize we had enough fondant for our birthday cake. Turns out three pounds of sugar makes a ton of fondant- who knew?
And then I decided I wanted to have not one but two different colors of fondant- because if I am going to make a horrendously ugly cake I am going all out.
I added more red food color gel and looked like I had murdered someone.
And then the cake was finished:
Yeah- I tried to do a bow....
So we cut into it and chowed down!
It was actually really, really good. The fondant had no flavor so the lemon frosting I used to hold the whole darn thing together came through, and the orange flavor of the cake was not overwhelming. And the cake was so moist!! But dense. Neither hubs nor I got more than a few bites in.
I guess we just can't eat cake like we used to.
Then came the dreaded clean-up. Hubby helped a lot so it actually only took a about ten minutes- also sugar dissolves in water so that helped. After attempting to remove the fine layer of powered sugar that engulfed our kitchen we were all beat.
Marlow curled up on the bed with his girlfriend
If you look closely you can see the stitching from where I had to sew the top of her head back on because he ripped an ear off while playing with the hubs.
And since I have bombarded you with gross pictures of me covered in sugar, flour, and who-knows-what; here is a picture of me clean and exhausted, but happy overall.
With no make up- how happy are you that Instagram has filters? LOL
So now I really hope someone out there is a baker because I am not sure what went wrong with the cake... it tasted top notch but the middle sunk so much that I know I did (at least) one thing wrong.
Here is what hubs and I came up with:
- I used glass bakeware instead of metal
- The dairy ingredients were not room temp- I took them straight from the fridge
- Not enough flour... I am torn between this because looking back on it, the batter (that I didn't notice anything wrong with) did seem a little runny... but the cake was so yummy and moist and I don't want to mess with that....
- I didn't have buttermilk so I used sour cream instead, sounded like a good idea at the time and it tasted fine so I don't know if I want to change that. Also, I don't know what buttermilk is.
- I did use gluten free all-purpose flour assuming that I wouldn't have to modify the recipe any further. I think I need to do some research and make sure that assumption is correct.
Hubs thinks the problem was we didn't buy the white rum yet so we couldn't test out the mojito recipe while we were making the cake.
I agree with him on this. But I am fairly certain something else is off.
Any thoughts?
Things I am happy for:
- sleep
- showers
- electricity
- second chances on making a birthday cake that looks like cake
- not needing to make more fondant for the party
- skirts with stretchy front bands for that "fun time" of the month
- my sarcasm, there is nothing fun about this time of the month
- my buddies on here who give me advice about rum and cake *hint hint* LOL
Have a fabulous day everyone- hope my misadventure into baking gave you a chuckle!
