(no subject)
Well, I made the cake. And then I went away for the weekend to see the Fall Fair on Salt Spring and show my grandmother my wedding dress. Then, the AC flight attendants threatened to strike, so I ended up flying to Toronto on Monday, a week early, for our wedding BBQ. I am amazingly grateful for my life and our travel benefits, but honestly... I'm really, really happy to be home. I've spent too much time away lately, it seems. (At least this trip didn't involve bears, though... unlike the one before it! But that's a story for another day.)
Anyway. Cake. Making this cake made me realize... I don't know fuck all about making cake. I got to the part where it was telling me to whip the egg whites into stiff peaks and I'm all... I don't actually know how to recognize stiff peaks. And then, I had the mixer set too fast and somehow blew straight past what I understand stiff peaks to mean and straight to something resembling styrofoam, which actually broke in half when I lifted the whipper thing. Oops! Then, to make matters worse, I suspect that I over-mixed the styrofoam egg whites into the batter.
Now, on the bright side... I managed to control the oven temperature spikes and the cakes didn't burn!
(please forgive the terrible photos in this blog going forward. My computer is sucking so much ass these days, I can't be bothered to give a crap about photography.)
On the cloudy side, the aforementioned egg/mixing issues seem to have resulted in a texture fail. These things had the consistency of pound cake, which I have a feeling wasn't what the recipe author intended?
I forgot to take a picture of the completed cake, before I started hacking it up. Oops!
So, aside from my failures, what was the verdict? A solid "meh." The flavour of the cake was interesting (it really did taste like champagne, in a decent way), but a little boring. The icing, on the other hand, was pretty gross. It was basically just butter, icing sugar, and a smidge of champagne... I mean, maybe I don't have the most sophisticated palate, but it ended up just tasting like tooth-achingly-sweet stale/flat champagne. And together with the cake it just gave this overall sort of... I don't know, yeasty kind of taste? Basically it just sort of felt like she removed "vanilla" from the ingredients and added "champagne" and frankly, vanilla would have been better.
So, oh well. At least I learned some things! I will master stiff peaks, eventually. In the meantime, I think I'm going to make something a little bit more yummy sounding... something with kahlua or irish cream. Although really I should probably make something with rum or cider, because that's what I have in the house. We'll see...
In other news, and without photographs, last night I made this banana bread. And it was UH-MAZING. Which is saying a lot, because it was kind of a using up leftovers, everything but the kitchen sink kind of thing. I had enough bananas to double the batch (and used 6 instead of 4), but then realized I didn't have enough butter (so mixed in some margarine - blech!) nor sour cream (so mixed in some plain yogurt). I was kind of grossing myself out when I was making it but it turned out fantastic. (I also mashed the bananas instead of slicing them... what kind of crack is that lady on?) I'd like to make it again with just butter and either only sour cream or maybe only greek yogurt? Yum.
Anyway. Cake. Making this cake made me realize... I don't know fuck all about making cake. I got to the part where it was telling me to whip the egg whites into stiff peaks and I'm all... I don't actually know how to recognize stiff peaks. And then, I had the mixer set too fast and somehow blew straight past what I understand stiff peaks to mean and straight to something resembling styrofoam, which actually broke in half when I lifted the whipper thing. Oops! Then, to make matters worse, I suspect that I over-mixed the styrofoam egg whites into the batter.
Now, on the bright side... I managed to control the oven temperature spikes and the cakes didn't burn!
(please forgive the terrible photos in this blog going forward. My computer is sucking so much ass these days, I can't be bothered to give a crap about photography.)
On the cloudy side, the aforementioned egg/mixing issues seem to have resulted in a texture fail. These things had the consistency of pound cake, which I have a feeling wasn't what the recipe author intended?
I forgot to take a picture of the completed cake, before I started hacking it up. Oops!
So, aside from my failures, what was the verdict? A solid "meh." The flavour of the cake was interesting (it really did taste like champagne, in a decent way), but a little boring. The icing, on the other hand, was pretty gross. It was basically just butter, icing sugar, and a smidge of champagne... I mean, maybe I don't have the most sophisticated palate, but it ended up just tasting like tooth-achingly-sweet stale/flat champagne. And together with the cake it just gave this overall sort of... I don't know, yeasty kind of taste? Basically it just sort of felt like she removed "vanilla" from the ingredients and added "champagne" and frankly, vanilla would have been better.
So, oh well. At least I learned some things! I will master stiff peaks, eventually. In the meantime, I think I'm going to make something a little bit more yummy sounding... something with kahlua or irish cream. Although really I should probably make something with rum or cider, because that's what I have in the house. We'll see...
In other news, and without photographs, last night I made this banana bread. And it was UH-MAZING. Which is saying a lot, because it was kind of a using up leftovers, everything but the kitchen sink kind of thing. I had enough bananas to double the batch (and used 6 instead of 4), but then realized I didn't have enough butter (so mixed in some margarine - blech!) nor sour cream (so mixed in some plain yogurt). I was kind of grossing myself out when I was making it but it turned out fantastic. (I also mashed the bananas instead of slicing them... what kind of crack is that lady on?) I'd like to make it again with just butter and either only sour cream or maybe only greek yogurt? Yum.