Chocolate Cake, second attempt May 5, 2008

I still want to make a great chocolate cake and since my friend Christie’s birthday was yesterday, I figured it would be a good time to try again.

Bad plan.

The recipe I chose sounded good, Decadent Chocolate Cake, from the Silver Palate Desserts Cookbook.  I read through the recipe and figured it seemed simple.  Then I realized that I had never actually had to beat egg whites “until stiff but not dry”. 

My only previous attempts at beating eggs whites I used my Kitchenaid and never got them more than foamy.  This time I used my hand mixer, and they definitely beat easily.  It was cool watching the transformation from clear sticky mess to a pure white puffy cloud-like texture.  I then was to gently fold this into my batter.

Just earlier in the day I had learned the proper way to fold in whites, and I was excited I knew how to do this “right”.  But the perfect egg whites seemed to have turned into a meringue consistency and I doubt my folding was gentle enough.

The next problem was the fact that I didn’t own a tube pan.  According to a couple cooking websites, it was fine to substitute a Bundt pan.  I poured the batter into the pan, stuck in the oven and waited.

20 minutes later, the house smelled like burned marshmallows.  I realized my pan wasn’t big enough for the cake and it was spilling over, I put a cookie sheet under the cake to prevent more spillage from causing a fire, but this caused my beautiful cake to collapse.  When the cake was finally done, it wasn’t pretty.  It had the texture of a bad case of acne, of course I was hoping once I flipped it, it would be OK.

Wrong!  Only half of the cake flipped out of the pan.  The other half I couldn’t even chisel out.  It tasted good, and it was moist, but there were these weird little beads throughout the cake, I suspect egg whites that didn’t get mixed in.

I may have added double the baking soda and none of the baking powder, but I can’t be sure.  The cake was such a disaster I didn’t even bother making the icing.  I’ll probably try again, but I’ll be borrowing a tube pan, making sure I get all the proper amounts of ingredients in the cake, and making sure I learn how to properly beat my eggs first.

I have been baking for several years, can turn out a decent loaf of bread, pan of brownies, or cheesecake any day of the week, but for some reason I am terrible with cakes.