Baking Friday - Cake # 1 - Fail!

This is our first cake in the 2014 Baking Fridays segment, and I can't, in all honesty, recommend it.  I'm sorry, but I can't - at least not like I did it this time. 

I would go so far as to call this a FAIL.  It's not a fail in that it can't be eaten.  It was edible, but...

And perhaps I should stay up late tonight and make a new cake so that I only share the successes with you.  But since I've always learned WAY more from failures than I ever learned from successes, I will go ahead and share this fail so we can all learn together.

Since there are more than 4 Fridays between now and Valentine's Day, I chose my favorite everyday cake combination for this first one - the classic yellow cake with chocolate icing. 

Are you snoozing yet? 

Exactly.  Why would you want to read about yellow cake with chocolate icing?  I debated carving a football from the cake ready for Super Bowl along with a Denver Broncos logo on one end and the Seattle Seahawks logo on the other end (G's two picks for this year's Super Bowl) as a way to jazz up yellow cake with chocolate icing, but then I thought, "nah, I've pretty much done that before."

So I thought I would try a recipe for yellow cake that I hadn't done before as well as a recipe for the chocolate icing that I hadn't ever tried.  Maybe that could jazz up this relatively boring choice.

But why not take it one step further and fail on both?  Yea, that could make this a more interesting read.

Ready?  Here goes.  And yes, this totally classifies as a true Deb Dessertation.  Coffee is suggested.

I chose this Pioneer Woman yellow cake recipe, based on a Better Homes and Gardens recipe as she states.  However I tried one change.  (Cause I hate to throw ingredients away.  I blame my mother.)  I had some eggnog left - a brand that we tried this year because we couldn't find the brand that we really like, and we really don't like the brand we bought - so I tried substituting eggnog for the milk. 

Doesn't work.  At least not in a 1-for-1 eggnog to milk way.  I would try this again, but instead of the 1-1/4 cups of milk that the recipe calls for, I would do 3/4 cup of eggnog and 1/2 cup of water.  Also I would reduce the sugar by 1/4 cup, plus I would bake the cake at 350 instead of 375. 

But what I would really do is buy the right eggnog, drink it all gone, enjoy every last drop, and then we wouldn't have this problem at all now, would we?

The batter tasted ok when I was spreading it in the pans...

..speaking of which, Santa brought me a scale, so I weighed each pan before baking.  Fun test of how well I can split batter!

Here were my first attempts...

And ya know what is crazy?  I had already moved a small amount from the lower-reading pan to the higher-reading pan, so after weighing I moved just about that same amount BACK to the original pan.  Sigh...

 

Much closer...

 



But the extra sugar in the eggnog along with the higher temp caused the cakes to bake up rather dark.

Fail.

For the icing, I chose Helen Fletcher's French Buttercream recipe, which uses eggs and a sugar syrup rather than powdered sugar like a standard American buttercream which I normally do.  The recipe worked as she described.  Perfectly, in fact. 

The texture is smooth as silk.  It melts on the tongue.  I added 3oz of unsweetened chocolate to the finished buttercream, and found the flavor to be right for my taste, but it was the texture that was the most fascinating to me. 

 

So what was the fail here?  Amount.  And taste.  Sorry, but it lacks much of a flavor punch.  It isn't overly sweet, but nor is it overly tasty or even buttery in flavor.  And given that there are 2 sticks of butter for this amount of icing, I would expect at least more of a buttery flavor, not just a buttery texture. 

 



I will do this technique again, even though it is more work, plus I would at least double it in order to have enough to cover a two-layer 8" cake.  And that would mean that I am committing 6 eggs plus a full pound of butter to a double recipe.  I haven't done the math, but that starts to add up pretty quickly.  I would also add more flavoring and my guess is that having more icing on the cake will help with the flavor miss that I'm feeling at the moment.  I LOVE Helen and her recipes, so this is why I definitely want to do this recipe again.  I still believe I could love a French Buttercream.

I might have had enough if I hadn't split the layers, but I doubt it even then.  I'm not a thick icing sort of gal, but this was way too thin.  That was G's main comment when we did our tasting on Wednesday night.  Take a look at these pics of the icing...

Minimal amount I would spread on a layer.

First layer spread...

 



Working on the sides.  How much do I have left?

Hmmm...that much?

Will I make it?

Yep!  Made it!

 

And even about 2 tablespoons left over!

Except not really.  Here is our slice that also shows how there isn't enough icing to cake ratio...sigh...

The cake lacked moisture.  The crumb was ok, but the flavor didn't taste like yellow cake.  And since the chocolate icing didn't taste "full" and didn't "hit" that chocolate spot, the net result was "This is cake?  In name only.  Not worth the calories."

I took the cake to work on Thursday as planned, and pitched about half of it.  The comments were in line with what I've said above. 

So our first venture was a fail, but I've learned some things, so it's not an entire fail. 

I hope you'll come back next Friday for our pie.  This will be a Valentine's pie, and I think I have a good plan that shouldn't be another fail. 

At least I hope so.  It could be a long year if we have 52 weeks of fails.  So far our score is 0 for 1...

Please don't give up on me yet...