It's a bit of an odd recipe, and it deviates from the standard cake formula of 4oz sugar + 4oz butter + 4oz flour + 2 eggs = yer basic all-purpose sponge cake. Baking is essentially a series of chemical reactions, and each of the ingredients does something to the mixture, so change the proportions and of course it comes out differently. Compared to the traditional recipe, this one uses a greater proportion of sugar and flour, which would make it heavier because it's the fat and the eggs which give cake a light texture (you've shifted a little bit towards the "bread" end of the baking spectrum). In the defence of whoever came up with the recipe, you probably couldn't put this much icing on a cube of cake made according to the 4/4/4/2 formula because it wouldn't get squashed or fall to bits, so you need something a bit more solid to make this concept work.
It definitely seemed... significantly more substantial than normal batter when it was mixed up, and I think you've got the right reason as to why it was made like that. I also had to convert things to measures in cups, furlongs and pounds per square mile, so rounding errors may have crept in and exaggerated the intended toughening of it.
I was expecting it to taste much sweeter than it did, as well, given everything that goes into it.
I have to ask how you settled on what characters to use.
And would wax paper really be called something different? I mean, that's about as straightforward as a name (and a product) can get... I'm thinking "paraffin parchment" now?
Anyway, semi-failure or not, it looks like it was fun. :)
Since you asked... the first two rows of a Linotype machine, some random extras and vowels, then forgetting the idea and going into the extended character set!
Racking my brains, I think that "greaseproof paper" might be the same thing. You would be surprised - and I continually am - by how little American has in common with the language that I grew up using.
Perhaps Parchment Paper? This is specially-treated paper to prevent it from sticking, and it doesn't melt easily.
I've never been a fan of using wax paper, since wax has been known to melt at high temperatures, resulting in ... cookies that taste like Crayola. With cakes, I'm not so sure about the resultant waxiness due to the lesser amount of tasty goodness touching the paper, but I would think parchment paper would be a reasonable substitute.
I may want to look at this recipe in further detail later on - grams are a wonderful way to get perfect measures of ingredients. I've been using ounces, myself, and sometimes a few tenths-of-an-ounce can really change things.
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I was expecting it to taste much sweeter than it did, as well, given everything that goes into it.
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And would wax paper really be called something different? I mean, that's about as straightforward as a name (and a product) can get... I'm thinking "paraffin parchment" now?
Anyway, semi-failure or not, it looks like it was fun. :)
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Racking my brains, I think that "greaseproof paper" might be the same thing. You would be surprised - and I continually am - by how little American has in common with the language that I grew up using.
Reply
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I've never been a fan of using wax paper, since wax has been known to melt at high temperatures, resulting in ... cookies that taste like Crayola. With cakes, I'm not so sure about the resultant waxiness due to the lesser amount of tasty goodness touching the paper, but I would think parchment paper would be a reasonable substitute.
I may want to look at this recipe in further detail later on - grams are a wonderful way to get perfect measures of ingredients. I've been using ounces, myself, and sometimes a few tenths-of-an-ounce can really change things.
Also, Wingeresque. *laugh*
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