Mount Crumble

Well, I decided to share a little story of a culinary flop lest you think I am a flawless chef.

When I was in Illinois, Joanna and I decided to bake a carrot cake for dinner. I was supposed to be imparting my great culinary wisdom to her. I had visions of a three-layer cake perfectly covered in cream cheese frosting and garnished with pecans. We were going to pipe a little trim at the base of the cake and we were going to hear great words of deepest admiration and praise as we brought the cake to the dinner table to rounds of applause.

Ummm…yeah…that’s not quite how it turned out.

I hadn’t made this recipe before, but Janessa warned me that I might have trouble getting it out of the pans if I didn’t use parchment or flour the pan or both. Well, I thought I could get away with just greasing the pan – after all, most cakes I make I only grease the pan, I don’t usually flour or use parchment unless I’m doing a wedding cake or something.

We took the cakes out of the oven and I told Joanna to invert them on a cooling rack. After all, that’s what you’re supposed to do with most cakes, and that’s what I usually do. Of course, if I had stopped to really think about it I would have remembered that I normally invert sponge cakes, not moist carrot/pineapple cakes. When I lifted a pan a few minutes later I discovered to my horror that only part of the cake had fallen out of the pan. I suddenly realized that
Janessa was right, but I had to prove her wrong. So, I turned the oven back on and replaced the part of the cake that had fallen out and put everything back in hoping I could bake it back into a more cohesive cake.

I took them out and let them cool. The first one came out mostly ok so I thought I was safe. But the second one – well, that was another matter. Joanna and I tried to glue it together, but I finally had to admit that this was one major cake flop! At that point I just had to laugh. We managed to glue it together with frosting somewhat, but in the end it was just pathetic. Janessa, of course, deeply enjoyed the fact that she was right and I had to admit it.

We took some pictures of our disaster, and I'll post them when the crew sends them to me. In the meantime, Joanna has promised me that next time I'm home, perhaps she will have to be giving me lessons. :)