Lovely unbaked cake, floating in space, did someone leave you out in the rain? Of course, it isn’t raining now, but does someone’s carelessness doom your future? Or, more likely, was a photo snapped of you hovering? You were using your fuel to get away from me, like a mini mother ship to tiny aliens. After all, assembling you was only half the battle. There was still the actual baking and decorating where I could still potentially mess things up.
Every weekend for the past few months I have been baking a cake. I have been doing so for several reasons. Firstly, I seem to be invited to many occasions where I am asked to bring a cake. Maybe they have never read this column, where I outline very specific cooking disasters, and are understandably delusional about my skills. The other possibility is that cakes are less frightening to transport than something that will immediately spoil or curdle on the journey. The other reasons is that I have a Favorite Guy, and we both have a particular preference for all things chocolate and we must try a variety of chocolate cakes. Yup, you read it right. We must.
This past week, I made something that was partly of my own creation, and something I faked very well.
The original inspiration involved going downtown and spending $7.00 on a slice of very decadent cake. The other half of the inspiration, was a few weeks back, making the Orange Chocolate Torte recipe on the back of a Ghirardelli Ultimate Fudge Brownie mix. It suggested preparing the mix, and adding orange zest. The part of the recipe that intrigued me was actually the idea of using a round pan and how mirror shiny the frosting looked. The idea of making two and stacking them on top of each other entered my consciousness. Of course, they needed to have whipped cream in the middle. The real stuff. That for sure would give me a cake that might be as good as that $7.00 a slice number, but for less.
Then, I could use that frosting stuff that they give you on the whole thing, and the desired result would be like making a giant Hostess Ding Dong, or King Don, or whatever they are calling those now. Oh, there is another important aspect of this. It is not supposed to be orange this time. So, just get the idea of orange out of your head.
After the mix was prepared exactly according to the instructions on the box, I did it all over again and made a second one. Some people would suggest making things together and doubling the recipe, then splitting them into two different pans. They forget who they are talking to, as I would probably be the one to get less egg in one and more in the other just by attrition.
This is how they looked, entering the fire pit of doom:
Then, I FREAKED. I took one cake out, and the other one was lonely for a short time.
You see, I had a temporary meltdown. I usually crack eggs in a mug. One mug had a suspiciously yellow tinged liquid in it still. I couldn’t have forgotten to have added the egg to one of them, could I? What would happen? Would it be an unqualified disaster? I then took a breath, and decided not to panic. What will be, will be. I inspected both cakes for loft and air bubbles and they both appeared to be the same. Perhaps the yellow liquid was just the result of rinse residue.
Okay, back to the show. The two cakes baked on 350 degrees for exactly 38 minute. Actually, I think I left them in for 40, and then worried if they were over baked. No matter. Through the magic of television, both cakes had cooled and had stacked themselves. Whipped cream was even in the middle.
Actually, in the meantime, I beat the whipping cream senseless with a hand mixer, until it had the consistency of concrete. I wish I had taken more photos, or at least could find them. The whipping cream was so heavy that when I filled half of the cake, both layers were completely parallel. I could have made a little diorama on the one side. The photo shows the cake put together, and with whip cream present. It is before I cleaned it up and dripped the frosting on it. it did not look like a big Hostess thing because I didn’t warm up the frosting enough and instead of just letting it drip, I spread it a bit too eagerly with the spatula.
How did it turn out, in the measurement of body count? Actually, it was liked! I think this is about the best cake I’ve ever made.
How did it tastes? Don’t go cutting the cake in half and shoveling it down your gullet. This is a very rich cake. You could do well with a smaller piece, unless you want your stomach to twist in a knot, feeling like it all sunk to the bottom like a big rock, develop a temporary case of gout and not want to eat for a week. Of course, I am being facetious, but that’s one rich cake. If you don’t tell anyone, it tastes like a rather decadent, fancy cake, as long as you can keep it together.
How ’bout you try this “fake” recipe? It isn’t really fake, but it is from scratch. Let me know how you do. A cake like this was $7.00 a slice downtown, and this cost about $6 a mix, plus $3 for a medium whipping cream. So, that’s $15.00. That would buy us two slices of the cake downtown. Being that we got twelve slices out of the cake, we would have paid $84.00 if we brought all of our friends out. Wowee…we’re rich!
Stay tuned for next week’s cake!
