My evening has been... Interesting! Suggestions on a rescue recipe??
Tonight I baked a hire chocolate mud cake. I got the recipe off another online cake decorating forum so I assumed it would be fine. I noted that the cooking instructions said to bake at 120c for 120 mins... That seems like a stupidly low temperature for a stupidly long time....but since I've never done a white choc mudcake before I thought I'd better stick to the method exactly.
So it was a 10 inch x 3 inch round...
Mixed the batter and all that, was glossy and fabulous looking...
Poured it in the prepared pan and let it go. I checked the progress about half an hour in... And through the oven glass I could see a very handsome looking cake slowly rising and goldening... Super....
Shortly after that I smell smoke... I sprinted to the kitchen in dread... Opened the oven door and out billowed enough smoke to make my house look like a seedy pub. Frantically and carefully (if those to words can ever go together) I scraped all the burnt cake off the bottom of my oven. The cake had risen over the Pan and I forgot to put a precautionary tray underneath aaahhhhh!
So hoping and praying that my cake didn't smell or taste like the burnt dregs it was baking with for that time, I carefully and gently closed the oven, holding my breath...
Fast forward to not two hours like the recipe said, but two hours and 45 minutes later (after turning the heat up 20 degrees) the cake was ready.
Staring at my cake I decided to name her titanic. She sunk like no cake ever sunk before, crack and all. Wanting to cry, I decided to have a shower instead and get the burned cake smell outta my hair.
Upon returning to the kitchen I turn my cake out of the pan to see that the bottom is moist and delightful... Taste test... Yummy yummy I'm going to eat the whole thing and drown my sorrows.
Anyways, here's where you fine ladies come in... My sons first birthday celebration is not tomorrow, but the next day. I need to bake a cake tomorrow morning so I can decorate it tomorrow evening ready for the party. I so wanted to do a white choc mud cake, but now I have no white choc left and I'm rural so I can't pop into the shops now.
What cake can I bake? I want to do a 10 inch round. Covered in fondant and topped with my iggle piggle cake topper, so it can't be a feathery light sponge. This will be my sons first birthday, and first ever taste of cake, so mud cake was prob way too much anyway. But just about everyone else there Are adults. (It's just family, no little pals, he's too young to remember haha)
Please help!! Recipe anyone?
I think I'm going to buy me a decent cake recipe book and maybe never use online recipes again... I've had problems in the past, many times. And whenever I use a recipe book it turns out perfect. Can you change my mind?
Thankyou ladies (and gentleman if your here to) :-)
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Katy Nott on
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Cripes! See what you mean - what a mess!
Penny, my suggestion would be a good old Victoria Sponge cake recipe. Only takes flour, caster sugar, margarine, eggs and baking powder. Sandwich with either just jam or jam and butter icing. It's a simple cake that won't disagree with you little one and just jam would keep it even more child friendly, but the addition of buttericing would jazz it up some for the adults. I use Vic Sponge in many of my celebration cakes (fondant covered), and it holds up fine. It is also moist and tasty. I use a Mary Berry recipe. Never made a big as a 10" from it, but have done 8" no problem. Do you have those things available?
If you're buying a recipe book, honestly, if you can get Mary Berry in Oz, I would go for her. I have NEVER had a failure with her recipes.
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Permalink Reply by Penny on
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Thankyou! I love you! Yes I have the ingredients and i think your right, keep it simple! Sigh if relief XoXo
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Katy... I looked up Mary Berrys recipe and its freely available online... But it requires two tins... Would I be able to do it in the one tin and layer it myself? Or is it too crumbly for that? Also would it be beneficial to use cake flour for this recipe? Or stick to normal flour. Thankyou so much
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Permalink Reply by June Kowalczyk on
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Penny
I have used a victory sponge cake recipe Katy has used often and shared with me. ( I'm in Canada.... sponge cake NOT the norm celebration cake here ). Used for a baby shower cake and I layered it. No problem, held up well. Know Katy has stacked her sponge cakes as well. I used all purpose flour, not cake flour when I made mine, turned out great. I never use cake flour when making cakes. Also, using a online recipe..... you will learn from experience to judge a recipe. I have got a lot of great cake recipes online. And also, sometimes we need the failures to learn.... that is certainly how I learned. Been baking a long, long time!! A good baking books are sometimes worth there weight I gold. I have a couple I use over & over. :o)
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Yo Penny - yes June is right, I have stacked my Vics. I have also baked in one tall tin and layeredit myself. You do need to cook it for longer though. I think, if I remember rightly, that a 25 minute bake was about 45-50 mins. Chill your cake for a few minutes before you try to cut it for layering if it's hot where you are. Good luck, hope it turns out well. By the way, if you see 2 methods of combining your ingredients, use the all in one method, it works a treat and is soooooo quick and easy.
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Thanks again you two! Where would I be without you?? Yes I agree June, I am learning from my mistakes. Currently I almost dread baking the cakes. The decorating part, no problem, I enjoy it so much... But the cakes are so touch and go I really struggle with it. Part reason, my oven is a small, cheap conventional oven. Other part, 5 years ago I didn't even know how to cook a roast... Or fried eggs! My mother didn't teach me to cook anything... When I got Married, I taught myself... Now I'm attempting to make very good cakes haha. So far the only cake I'm 100% pleased with and confident to sell when I start up my business (which won't be for a while after this!) is my carrot cake. It's Devine! But everything else.... Lots of practice still needed for the perfect recipes. Doesn't help that I am completely useless at mathematics, so conversions, measurements Nd the like are hard work for me. Yes I'm that bad haha. Getting there though, with the help of very helpful people on here! So, thankyou again! Ill let you know how I go... And I'll post up a pic of the finished cake of course :-)
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Permalink Reply by Goreti on
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You just need a couple of good recipes to build up your confidence. You are probably right that your oven does not help. One cake that my family loves and comes out right every time is Linda Wolff's Triple Chocolate Cappuccino Sour Cream Pound cake. This is the link on here if you are interested http://www.cakeswebake.com/profiles/blogs/triple-chocolate-cappucci...
I also love her Lemon version which she has on her facebook page https://www.facebook.com/notes/linda-wolff/absolutely-the-best-sour...
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Glad we could help. I was very fortunate that I was raised by a "baking" Mom. But I there is still always something to learn in baking. :o )
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Thankyou Goreti! Will have a look at these recipes tonight! The Victoria sponge is about to go in the oven. I'm nervous... I think the pan I'm using is too big... But I hear they rise quite well... It's only a family shindig so it's okay if it comes out a little "short" lollll. Lol June pretty sure my mum used the oven for roasts only. And then when I was a teenager she made boxed cupcakes a few times! I mean about 3x. Haha
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My Mom baked up a storm. Cakes... amazing pies... I make wicked pastry... learned from her.... squares, and cookies.... cookies. Plus when I grew up, we had Home Ec. Learned how to cook & bake & sew at school. That has gone the way of the Dodo bird. Don't think there any Home Ec programs left anywhere. Too bad, cause when you learn to bake from scratch, it tastes better, its cheaper, and not full of all the "additive" crap in store bought stuff.
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I agree June! Ill be homeschooling my children because the education system here is shameful. No home ec, no morals, and unlike American schools which seem to be at least quite patriotic, our history classes are terrible. I learned barely anything about our country's true history or politics or anything. Ugh anyway off topic sorry lol.
Well, I'm sad to report my Victoria sponge sank also. Not as bad as cracking, but too much to use it. I'm devistated. I followed the directions exactly, made sure Ingredients were room temperature. Used my stand mixer for perfect incorporation of ingredients... Got my oven up to temperature, didn't open door till the end..... Etc Etc. the cake tin I'm using is a very good quality tin.
It does taste great though and it won't be wasted. Hubby and in laws will eat it.
Me thinks its time to buy an oven thermometer just to check if that's the problem!!! I have one last shot of a simple birthday sponge I found on a website, specifically for a 10 inch round. If this doesn't work ill be getting my dad to bring a cake with him :-(((( its got 10 mins left in the oven... It seems to be okay at present. It hasn't risen to the top of the pan, only almost 3/4 up. But 10 mins might help? Aahhh discouraged. 4 hours in the kitchen this morning.... Hopefully ONE good cake. I was SO looking forward to creating my sons first birthday cake. I have the fondant, buttercream and Gumpaste stuff all ready to go :-(
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