A Baking Disaster

I have a confession to make. Last night I served a terrible chocolate cake.

I found the recipe in a cookbook that has, on other occasions (though not this one) produced well-executed dishes, from salads to stews to desserts, so the failure was either my own, or one of the cookbook’s rare flaws.

But flawed it was. Reputedly a chocolate angel food cake, the dessert was not airy and light like it should have been – perhaps I over whipped the egg whites? The warm, rich cocoa scent gave off faint echoes of cinnamon, and the critical sniff test indicated success. Nevertheless, I was worried – I had munched a few crumbs off the stainless steel counter top when I was wresting the cake from the tube pan earlier in the day; those crumbs were dry, like sawdust, and lacked the requisite fluffiness inherent in something deserving of the term “angel food.” I consoled myself with the knowledge that I’d be burying each piece in mounds of just-whipped cream and a thin drizzle of raspberries, pureed and then sweetened with a spoonful of sugar. As it turns out, that spoonful was not enough to help the medicine go down.

My guests were nice about it, sort of. They ate nearly every bite, but no one protested when I said it was hideous. It would have been futile, anyway. Then they suggested – nay, insisted – that I blog about it, since failures pave the road to success (and, I suspect, make the most amusing pieces). One of them called it a “sh*t cake” in an email the next day, leading me to believe it was possibly much worse than I remembered.

The solution, I have decided – other than never making that recipe again and cutting it out of the cookbook with an X-ACTO knife – is to make something tried, true and chocolaty. To restore faith, mine and others’, in my culinary prowess requires an old favorite, one you can have no excuse for mucking up. And so I am off to make chocolate Rice Krispie treats. Wish me luck.

Comments

[Mom]

When you get the recipe for "Aint Hattie's Chocolate Cake," your guests will swoon with delight & all thoughts of the s#@t cake will be removed from their minds at once!