In my defence, this was the first time I had made cake.
Still, it was Faye’s birthday and there’s certainly nowhere to buy a cake around here, so I thought I’d give it a go.
Cake making lessons learned:
- Have a cake pan. They’re designed (circularity and height and sometimes removable exterior) so that the cake doesn’t instantly fall apart when you take it out. A low, wide, long baking dish is not a good alternative.
- Leave the cake for a long time before trying to remove it from your low, wide, long baking dish. Otherwise, half will stay stuck to the bottom while the other half becomes a broken pile of chocolate.
- Making caramel (also first time) to glue your broken cake back together might seem like a good idea, but there are a few things to be careful of. Specifically:
- If your recipe calls for “sweetened condensed milk” and your local store only stocks “evaporated milk”, be aware that the latter is much more watery and you’ll have to spend an hour or two stirring your caramel over a burner to evaporate off the extra water without burning it.
- Your caramel will, once cool, become MUCH, MUCH harder than it is while you’re cooking it. Anticipate this, otherwise you will be creating an layer of impenetrable cement in and around your collapsed pile of chocolate cake pieces.
- Hiding some gummy bears inside the cake, for a fun surprise for the birthday girl is also a great idea. Just be aware that hot caramel will melt your gummy bears and fuse them into a single, hard, unbreakable, knife and human strength resisting, chocolate coated cake interior of doom.
- Finally, and I have to give credit to Faye for this tip, sprinkling some icing sugar on top of your pile of broken caramel-covered, gummy-doom-centred cake pieces will make it look like snow covering a local mountain! Then you can claim it was all by design.
After a solid ten minutes of both of us desperately trying to rip the cake apart, Faye’s birthday guests were treated to some delicious chocolate caramel mess! Made with real love (locally sourced)!
