So, I've made a few cakes in my day. You could even say several or many. So, by now, I should certainly know what I'm doing. And yet, if you know me, you know I never know what I'm doing.
I felt like baking. There was one lonely box of cake mix - chocolate - in the pantry. And, conveniently, one container of chocolate frosting, with sprinkles. Today wasn't a from-scratch kind of day. I figured I'd send it off to work with Jer tomorrow. So, I'm mixing it up and discover I don't have enough oil. No biggie; I melt some butter into it. Easy. I'm a pro, after all. Then I get to the water part. 1¼ cup. I say, "One and one quarter cup. That just seems like a lot. Let me check again. Yup, one and one quarter cup."
So I go fill up my measuring cup to the top. I look at it. "This just seems like too much water. Let me check again...yep, it says one and one quarter, okay."
Jer says, "Isn't that your -me:dump water- 2-cup measuring cup?"
"Craaaaaaaap."
I stir it up. I don't have cake batter; I have chocolate soup.
But I can fix this! A lifetime of leaping before looking has prepared me for just this! I whip out my trusty from-scratch chocolate cake recipe and look at it. It calls for 1 cup of water. I added ¾ cup too much water. So I just need to add ¾ of all the ingredients and I should have proper batter for 1¾ cake! Yeah...I'll worry about the 1¾ cake part later.
Let's pause for a minute. I've already screwed this cake up in at least two ways (we can't, after all, discount the possibility that I've missed something I've done wrong). You would probably think that I would bust out the calculator to exactly determine what ¾ of each ingredient is. You'd be wrong.
First ingredient: 2 c sugar. Well, that's easy enough, 1½ c sugar. Done! Next ingredient 1½ c flour. Hmmm.... Well, it'd be 1 and something cup, but less than the sugar so...adds a random amount. And that's about how all the rest of the ingredients went. And here's what it looked like, new dry ingredients on top of the soup.
I had been planning on making cupcakes, but didn't have any papers. So then I was going to do a 2-layer cake, but didn't want the hassle. So I had already decided on the bundt pan when disaster struck. I would definitely need more than just the bundt, but probably more than bundt + one 9" round pan, but less than bundt + two 9" round pans. So I decided on bundt + 8" square pan.
As I was pouring the batter into the pans, I realized I had forgotten to add vanilla. Par for the course, really. I wasn't even going to worry about it. Meanwhile, who the heck even knows how long these need to bake. Who the heck even knows how much batter got in each pan. But whatever, into the oven!
I checked on them after a bit. They looked like cake. They smelled like cake. And, yes, the oven door burned like fire. They were still a little jiggly, so I let them go a little longer.
Toothpick said they were done, so out they came. Out of the oven, not burned and hopefully fully baked.
They even turned out of the pans fine. Better than normal, even, as the bundt pan usually sticks.
The square one had a small piece that stuck to the pan. I ate it (duh) and it tasted fine. They might be cake, yet! I let them cool and then frosted them.
Tomorrow will tell if I did indeed succeed at salvaging them.
Like I know what I'm doing.
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