I was fixing a birthday cake for a member of my pod the other day and decided to try something new. Here’s what it was supposed to look like:
The cake itself used a fairly small amount of flour and a can of chocolate syrup, so I knew it would be moist. It is a single layer cake with ganache poured over it. The instructions said:
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until just set in the middle. Allow to cool in the pan for 30 minutes, then remove from the pan, turn the cake upside down on a wire rack set over a sheet pan and cool completely.
Total disaster! What the instructions should have said was “bake until cake is thoroughly set in the middle”! As it was, when I turned the cake over, the insides started dripping through the wire rack (I guess that is why the directions call for it to be set over a sheet pan). The cake was so tender, in fact, that the wire rack was leaving deep marks even on the part of the cake that was set.
So now, instead of having a cake that was even across the top, I had one with a huge dip in the center. If I had tried to pour ganache over it, the ganache would have just pooled in the low areas. I didn’t really have the time or the energy to whip up any other frostings, so I ended up calling it a “gooey” cake and served it to the birthday boy with ice cream (I also made cookies as a backup).
Tuples and Attributes 