Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Why I should never bake.




So last night I wanted a cake, like really wanted a cake. It was one of those desires that you could taste as I thought about having some cake. Problem was I had no cake mix and really didn't want to go to the store for just cake mix. I go to the store for just cake mix and end up coming home with bags of things and no cake mix.

I've got flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder and arms. Let's do this!

So I looked up some recipes for cake online. Let me tell you there is a lot of cake recipes out there! White, yellow, chocolate, strawberry and I'm sure millions more but that was about when my brain was spinning and I knew I had made a yellow cake mix before (from the box) so I could totally do this!

So now I knew the color/flavor, time to read and mix. The first line is "Cream sugar and shortening". Seriously who comes up with baking terms? Mash, mix, put together these things I understand. I'm not sure really how one creams anything, unless it a violent type of creaming. Kinda like "Hey buddy I'm going to cream you after school today!"

So cream, mix together until it looks mixed I figured what was the difference so that is what I did. The rest was pretty simple, mix eggs first then add flour and the rest. Put in oven and get cake! That is what I am talking about.

It's at about this time that things started to go wrong, now I'm probably going to die of salmonella at some point I'm sure because I am a batter taster. Tasting is an objective term that I am so using objectively because if the truth were to be known if someone wouldn't stop me I might just make batter and eat it without cooking it one day. Chocolate chip cookies and brownie batter being the worst offenders in the batter categories. 

So it passed the batter test, not as sweet as I am used to but still pretty good. But something was happening while I was cooking. The center of the cake was getting smaller and the outer layer looked like normal cake. Maybe it is just a slow riser? I mean I know I don't like to be all up and perky in the morning so I am just sure this cake and I were destined to be friends, or at least until I ate it. But it wouldn't rise.

So I take out the cake, so it will be thin I think. I can handle eating thin cake, just means I get to eat more right? So it was frosting time, my frosting comes out of a can so no need to put any energy into that right? Only maybe next time I might flip it over and look for an expiration date. You see it expired a year ago, I didn't see this until after we had eaten some though and as this all happened almost 24hrs ago I think we are safe. 

Frosting? Check! Cake? Check! Sprinkles? Oh why the hell not you only live once am I right!

I was excited and nervous for my first taste, this being the first non mix cake I had ever cooked I wasn't sure what was going to happen. Then it did, it had a cake texture of that I can be sure but as far as flavor went there was none. No cake sweetness, just freaking cake bread. The frosting and sprinkles weren't helping either because it was at this time I found that it was passed its Best By date and it wasn't helping matters on the making my cake amazing front.

And this is why I shouldn't be allowed to bake, EVER!