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Fri 25 Jan, 2008 10:19 pm
Tomorrow we are celebrating my older son's birthday. Tonight I attempted to make his birthday cake, a chocolate layer cake. Now I have my standard chocolate cake recipe and it is very good. But I was watching America's Test Kitchen last weekend and saw them make what looked like a great chocolate cake. I wanted to make it. You can get the recipe from their website.
I got all the ingredients. It's a pretty complicated cake, but I thought I could handle it. First mistake. I read the recipe over again before I started. It called for two 9" round 2" high cake pans. Ok, I have 9" pans bt they are 1 1/2" high. How much difference can 1/2" make? I'll use them. Second mistake.
I melt the chocolate and set it aside to cool while I mix the dry ingredients. Some flour, salt and baking soda. The baking soda is in the cabinet over the counter where the chocolate is sitting to cool. As I pull out the baking soda, I knock a bag of fennel seeds off the shelf. It lands right in the bowl of chocolate. As I pull it out I realize that the bag has a hole in it. About a 1/4 teaspoon of fennel seeds are now in the chocolate. (As Roberta would say, FEH!) I pick out as many as I can see.
The batter mixes up great. I looks light and has amazing volume. I split it between the two pans and put them in the oven. Supposed to bake 25-30 minutes. After about 20 minutes, I smell something burning. I run to the kitchen to see smoke pouring out of the oven. Jesu Christe!
I look inside to find chocolate lava streaming from each pan and forming mounds of burning cake on the floor of my oven. ( What a difference 1/2" makes!) The cakes, however, are not done. They need at least 5 more minutes.
I start opening windows and turning on exhaust fans. Miraculously, the smoke alarms didn't go off! I wait another 5 minutes. They're still not testing done. Another 5 minutes, not done. I finally took them out of the oven and they immediately fell.
I called Jay. "How important is it for you to have a homemade birthday cake?" He said, "I prefer bakery cakes anyway." I don't know if he said that just to make me feel better or not. It did.
Tomorrow, I'll order a cake.
Tell us about your latest disaster so I won't feel so alone.
No such thing as a failed chocolate cake.
Just call it something else and serve with cream or icecream or both.
chocolate Fudge cake
chocolate pudding cake
chocolate mud cake
chocolate lava cake
Chocolate volcano pudding
Gotta agree wit the awssie.
No such thing as bad chocolate.....
RH
I have ruined many a cakes in my short lifetime. Usually I just convert them into rumballs. Can't go wrong with rumballs andyou can make them out of almost anything.
My worst kitchen disaster was the Spinach Disaster. I put the cooked spinach in the mixer, put it on "liquify"..... Did not put the cover on. You can imagine. It was like watching a car race at the famous Brno mud track. Could not get to the mixer for awhile, it kept splashing me in the eyes as if i stood right behind the skidding wheels of Nikki Lauda (or whoever).
The result was amazing. Truly spectacular. Spinach was on the ceiling, all four walls, floor, every inch of every surface. Have you ever tried to mop the ceiling? It was a loooong Saturday.
This wasn't so much a kitchen disaster as a date disaster with kitchen involvement. First disaster of the evening: I had put carpet tiles down in my miniscule bathroom. One of them somehow didn't stick to the floor and was blocking the door. He couldn't get out of the bathroom. The door was stuck. I shouted instructions through the door.
Then the thing I was broiling caught fire, so it was just a little "crisp."
Then I opened a bottle of champagne, not something I was accustomed to doing. The cork got away from me, flew across the room, and hit him right above the eye.
And for dessert, some kinda creme de menthe-ice cream concoction. The ice cream wouldn't freeze (primitive freezer). So we ended up with greenish, mintyish, vanillaish cold soup.
C'est la vie.
sounds like an omen if i ever saw one.
I would agree with you both dadpad and Rockhead, except burnt chocolate ain't god for nutiin'.
Dag, Visions of Lucy!
Roberta, Did you ever see him again?
Swimpy wrote:I would agree with you both dadpad and Rockhead, except burnt chocolate ain't god for nutiin'.
Dag, Visions of Lucy!
Roberta, Did you ever see him again?
Sell for the carbon credits?
Hehe. I think I may have brought the earth to the tipping point tonight.
Actually I think if you soak the burnt bits in Baileys irish cream overnight it could be interesting.
The guy had no sense of humor.
dadpad, give it up. I'm not fishing it out of the garbage. Some things have so much bad karma that they must be deep sixed.
Swimpy wrote:The guy had no sense of humor.
dadpad, give it up. I'm not fishing it out of the garbage. Some things have so much bad karma that they must be deep sixed.
Chocolate has no bad karma.
You see lost cause, I see Irish chocolate trifle.
Soak the torched remains in Baileys irish cream overnight. smooth out a layer into a baking tray 1.5 inch deep. cut fruit mandarine orange kiwifruit add berries and lay over base. Cover in fresh King island whipped cream. Dust with cinnamon and refrigerate until served.
Individual portions can be made using brandy balloons.
I don't blame the chocolate. It was an innocent bystander.
We once smoked a turkey, the hard way.
Thanksgiving, the second time, at our house.
One big turkey, one cheesey disposable aluminum foil roasting tray.
"Don't worry honey, we'll be back in a few hours, plenty of time to start basing."
The weight from the turkey caused the aluminum tray to be scrunched and torn, on the oven rack. Drip, drip, puff, puff, smoke, smoke.
Came home to a house full of smoke and the alarm going off.
alex240101 wrote:We once smoked a turkey, the hard way.
Thanksgiving, the second time, at our house.
One big turkey, one cheesey disposable aluminum foil roasting tray.
"Don't worry honey, we'll be back in a few hours, plenty of time to start basing."
The weight from the turkey caused the aluminum tray to be scrunched and torn, on the oven rack. Drip, drip, puff, puff, smoke, smoke.
Came home to a house full of smoke and the alarm going off.
Oh man! I remember using those damned pans. Shall we take up a collection to buy you a new roating pan, alex?
So were you able to salvage the turkey?
This isn't very dramatic, but soul searing... osso's massacre of the ossobuco, with hungry people waiting. I think the meal turned out to be gravy and mashed potatoes:
This link and the next six posts -
http://www.able2know.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1718830#1718830
Ooooooh. How did you put out the fire?
Looking back at Roberta's disaster date - that's a movie scene.
hairdryer is wonderful for putting fires out.
i was grilling a chidken. we have (had, actually) a small electric grill, a wonderful thing. it was a soviet model...that should've tipped me off. anyway, in went the chicken, rotating around, as it should. a few drops and the whole thing set on fire. now, i would not pour water on it.... i know it's plugged in, i am smart that way. so i ran and grabbed a hairdryer and blew and blew... it didn't occur to me to actually UNPLUG it.... the hairdryer actually worked, so major disaster was averted, but i did feel utterly stupid.
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