The cake that ate Thursday

Remember what I said yesterday about my department having a bake-off today? Remember what I said about me making a cake? Remember how I said I liked baking (which I do)?

Well, last night, baking and I almost had an “I-hate-you!”-screaming break-up. I’m talking throwing things and deleting phone numbers out of your cell and unfriending on FB. A talking-badly-about-you-to-mutual-friends kind of break-up.

Why? Because I decided to make a stupid chocolate cake and nothing—I repeat nothing—went as planned.

I’ve made this particular chocolate cake recipe numerous times. It’s a great recipe for a “deep, dark chocolate cake.” It’s really moist and yummy. I decided to make two layers, make a ganache filling (not as difficult as it sounds), and frost it with homemade chocolate buttercream icing. This actually creates chocolate overload, but by the time I frosted the cake, I pretty much hated chocolate. And baking. And myself.

First, making this cake took FOREVER. I started around 6:30 or 6:45 p.m. It was getting toward 10 p.m. when I got finished.

Secondly, after baking the cake in my round pans that I have used a hundred times and had greased per the instructions and then letting the layers cool in the pans for a bit, I went to turn the cakes out on the cooling rack. And one layer completely broke apart. Half of it was on the rack; half of it was still in the pan. Great, I thought. This is spectacular. But always the optimist, I thought that I’d just make that the bottom layer and cover up the problems with icing.

Then, I turned out the other layer and for some reason, one side didn’t come out easily, leaving a sort of jagged edge that was going to be hard to frost because crumbs would go EVERYWHERE! Score!, I thought to myself. At least the ganache was the right consistency.

I pieced together the bottom layer on the cake carrier and smothered it and all its fissures with ganache. I plopped the stupid top layer on. I frosted the top of the cake and started trying to work on the edges. This was really frustrating, actually. Finally, I just sort of let the icing do what it wanted and smoothed it around. And stuck the whole thing in the fridge so I wouldn’t have to look at it.

Hopefully, this “masterpiece” will taste better than it looks! 🙂