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adventures in baking
Some of you will recall I started a Great Cake Baking Project a while back, intending to bake one of each of the cakes in my 80 year old cookbook. The very first cake, an angel food cake, turned out somethig more of an angel food doughnut: it tasted fine right out of the oven, but I’d overwhipped it and it was flat.
Well, having all these leftover egg whites from making custard for ice cream, I figured I should try it again. Except having just moved, I have no idea where my tube pan is. So I ended up making cupcakes.
I didn’t take pictures, but they turned out perfectly. They also verified what my mother has always said to be true, which is that angel food cake is pretty useless cake. It’s only good the day you bake it, and even then the only thing you really want to do with it is pour strawberries and cream over it and make strawberry shortcake. In this regard, it was magnificent. By the next day, it was just sort of nasty. So it’s a good thing they turned out, because now I don’t have to ever make another angel food cake. :)
Then there was the chocolate ice cream I tried making. Now, I screwed up the custard–the double-boiler water wasn’t hot enough when I started, so it cooked too long and got lumpy (causing me to run to the internet to see if lumpy custard could be saved. The answer: yes, with a wire whisk and an arm-numbing amount of whisking.)–so I can’t be sure if it was me or the recipe, but the final result was a frozen chocolate mousse. Now, if you wanted a frozen chocolate mousse, it was very nice, but I didn’t, so it was disappointing. Now I can’t decide if I should try that recipe again in case it was me, or just move on…
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GCBP: Butter Sponge Cake
I’d intended to make this yesterday, but after going forth to get necessary ingredients and being forced to face down the ungodly crush of people milling about because of the upcoming hurly match, all I wanted to do was hide at home and sob. So Young Indiana and I made this today: a Butter Sponge Cake.
Well, cupcakes, anyway. The cake itself is nothing much: sweet but flavorless. The ganache frosting is almost a pudding, and my husband approved of it mightily. The recipe said garnish with whipped cream, and hey, who am I to argue with whipped cream?
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GCBP: Angel Food Cake
I have this wonderful, 70 year old basic cookbook called Meta Given’s Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking. My grandmother had it, my mother inherited it, and years ago Mom went forth on the internet and single-handedly drove the price of the 2-volume set up from about $12 per book to $70+ per book, because she bought every single set available and gave them to family members. Anyway, I’ve been saying for ages that I wanted to start at the beginning of the cake section and bake one of each cake, just to see how they all turned out. So I decided I’d do that. Generally I’m actually going to make cupcakes, because they’re easier to send to Ted’s work, but the first cake in the Great Cake Baking Project is an Angel Food Cake, which doesn’t so much lend itself to cupcakes, I don’t think…
(some hours later)
Quite certain I’ve overbeaten my batter, but we’ll see how the cake turns out. I don’t know if this project requires me making a Perfect Cake each time, or if just making one is sufficient…
(and later yet)
*laughs right out loud* More of an angel food doughnut than cake, I’d say. It’s beautifully white, but, er, a bit flat:
*laughs more* This may be the least successful cake I’ve ever made in my life, in fact. Someday I’ll try making another one, but I think I’ll tick this one off the list and move on. :)
