Today was my younger brother Reed's Sweet Sixteen. Reed likes to complain that he always gets the shaft when it comes to birthdays. Mostly, I think he's exaggerating: last year was his "Golden Birthday" so he got quite a bit of money from Mom, an ice cream cake with a topping bar and even a present from my boyfriend. I don't think that's such a bad deal.
This year, however, things couldn't be worse. Tonight we were supposed to have Mom's BBQ ribs, corn on the cob and roasted baby potatoes (pretty much everyone's favorite meal over here) but Mom woke up pretty sick. The saving grace of the day should have been the homemade birthday cake I made but it was a disaster.
Reed wanted a dark chocolate cake with white chocolate incorporated somehow. I hate white chocolate but I went for it anyway. I am a firm believer in using the recipe on the back of the box. If Nestle says this is how you make chocolate chip cookies, this is how you make chocolate chip cookies.
When I make regular chocolate cake, I usually use the recipe on the back of the Hershey's Cocoa Powder so I found the same recipe for dark chocolate cake on the wrapper for Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa Powder.
I do not believe there is anything wrong with the recipe. The grave error occurred when I tried to improvise and use the white chocolate chips. The other day I made a chocolate fudge sauce for my banana dessert so I thought I would use the same recipe to make a white chocolate sauce for the cake. It turned out well but when I tried pouring it over the bottom layer of the cake ( I only intended to use it as filling) I poured too much and the poor cake was floating in a sea of white chocolate fondue.
I attempted to rescue the cake but transferring it to a different cake plate only made it crumble. It was weighed down by the white chocolate. I put the second layer on top and tried to glue everything together with frosting. Too much frosting.
The foundation was so crumbly and weak that the cake fell slowly over 25 minutes. We lit it with a candle and resolved to have Reed's real birthday tomorrow. To top it all off, it was disgustingly rich and sweet. Reed and I couldn't even eat it although Seth and Ian kept asking for seconds.
I think I will stick to the recipe tomorrow when I make black tie cupcakes.
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