To eat your cake and blog it too

The above picture is what happens when you take baking directions from a dog. Another "Cooking with Dog" recipe, this one for Christmas cake. There wasn't as much direction as was needed. Theirs turned out looking fantastic of course, where as mine, literally, fell flat. It tasted like an overly sweet, floury omelet. Not delicious.



After watching a much longer and much more in depth "Cooking with the Stars" (hosted by Julia Childs) Lilian and I decided to make a genoise chiffon cake instead. See, the thing that is similar is that you beat four whole eggs until they look like whip cream, then you carefully fold a small amount of flour (and things like sugar and coacoa and stuff, but not baking powder or soda) into the eggs and bake it, then you cut it into sections and stuff it with whipped cream and berries.

One trick is to beat the eggs over low heat to get them to remain puffy. Cooking with dog kind of touched on this, but it wasn't clearly explained. I used the work bowl from Betty (my stand mixer) over my portable gas burner and just barely turned the heat on. I think this helped to keep the cake more stable during the folding and baking steps.



This cake was fantastic. I will make this again.

Roll Cake II: The Wrath of Sarah

I would recommend using only half the cream called for in that recipe.

Rolly Polly Cake

Now, that probably looks more like some kind of killer space slug than its intended form of "jelly filled roll cake". Let me count the ways I went wrong.



Firstly, the recipe called for four egg whites beaten until stiff but not dry. I have no real clue as to what this meant and beat them until I got bored of it (which I think was around the right place).

Secondly, the recipe called for the filling to be whipped cream. But it's flooding here (which is why I baked a cake instead of going to work) and I didn't feel like braving the elements for two cups of heavy cream to beat.

The jam itself was a gift (a delicious and much appreciated gift) but it never really set correctly and was runny even before spreading it on hot cake.

The recipe also called for using parchment paper and stated that this would get rid of all the little brown bits (which I concluded meant the skin) but it came off cleanly.

Basically... you should just follow the recipes correctly and contrast/compare against as many similar recipes as possible.

I bet this will still be good if I can get whipped cream into it, or I'll just eat strangely curled jellied cake and call it good.