Deflated Christmas cake
Obviously there's never a good time to have a cooking failure but Christmas Eve has got to be one of the worse days out there. I only realised this afternoon that I hadn't made cake or biscuits or anything to contribute to Christmas at home. Anyway I dashed off to Sainsbury's to pick up the relevant stuff this afternoon and then made the cake this evening. It was Nigella Lawson's "Snow-Topped Spice Cake" which I've made for the past few years now without any problems. Until tonight.
The cake rose impressively in the oven and it was looking good till it rose too much and spilt over the sides of the tin (NB the recipe does call for a bundt tin but we don't have one so I make it in two sandwich tins and have never had a problem with this before!) and crusted on the oven rack. Nice.
Then of course when I took it out of the oven they both collapsed.
You can see the weird muffin top it seems to have developed and where it's torn from spilling over onto the oven rack.
What you can't tell from these pictures is that the cake itself is crispy (just shy of burnt- it tastes okay, just chewier than normal!) on one half and golden on the other. It makes me wonder if there was a problem with the oven?
I wasn't planning on icing them till tomorrow anyway so if I still think they look truly horrible tomorrow I might cut them up into cake squares and put thick icing on top to hide the mess whereas usually I just put a little icing in the middle and then just dust the top with icing sugar.
I guess you can't win them all. Still, I'm taking some comfort from the fact that my family will probably eat the cake anyway. As long as it tastes good they're happy!
The cake rose impressively in the oven and it was looking good till it rose too much and spilt over the sides of the tin (NB the recipe does call for a bundt tin but we don't have one so I make it in two sandwich tins and have never had a problem with this before!) and crusted on the oven rack. Nice.
Then of course when I took it out of the oven they both collapsed.
You can see the weird muffin top it seems to have developed and where it's torn from spilling over onto the oven rack.
What you can't tell from these pictures is that the cake itself is crispy (just shy of burnt- it tastes okay, just chewier than normal!) on one half and golden on the other. It makes me wonder if there was a problem with the oven?
I wasn't planning on icing them till tomorrow anyway so if I still think they look truly horrible tomorrow I might cut them up into cake squares and put thick icing on top to hide the mess whereas usually I just put a little icing in the middle and then just dust the top with icing sugar.
I guess you can't win them all. Still, I'm taking some comfort from the fact that my family will probably eat the cake anyway. As long as it tastes good they're happy!