Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Not now, son, I'm making CAKE!!!

I made cake last night. At around 10pm. No, I really don't know why.

But at least it wasn't stolen by Lex Luthor. That would be terrible.

I just decided I was going to make a cake. Truthfully, I'd been considering it the day before anyway. I was thinking maybe a peach, apricot, and nectarine upside down cake, but I lacked brown sugar and was too much of a cheap bastard to go out and buy some. Also, I was low on flour, so only had enough to make the recipe half sized. Which turned out to be a good thing...becuase jesus christ is that a huge recipe! Holy fuck.

Ahem.

Basic recipe was an orange chiffon cake (being a cake made using oil and beaten egg whites rather than butter...no anywhere near as girly as it sounds) out of a huge Good Housekeeping recipe book that I got as a gift a while back. I made half the recipe, and substituted fresh apple cider in place of the orange juice, as well as adding a bit of cinnamon. I finished it off by placing a thin layer of batter around the bottom, and then layering it over with slices of apricots.

Holy shit did that thing rise. I'd forgotten just how much chiffon cakes rise in the oven (it rose to form a dome approximately that was twice as high as the pan). It smelled *incredible*, though, and cooked all the way through without incident. Turned out nice, tall, and quite moist and fluffy inside. Apricots didn't turn out so great, though, and I was disappointed by their performance in the cake. Next time I really *should* invest in the brown sugar to do a proper upside down caramel cake...and also use LOTS more fruit.

Taste is a little on the bland side, but that's pretty normal for chiffon cakes, since they don't have any butter in them. Apple taste carries through somewhat, though, as does the flavor of the orange zest. Cinnamon doesn't add much flavor here, but gives it a nice aroma.

For a spontaneous cake that I made from adapting a recipe at 10pm on a Tuesday night, though, its pretty damn good! Also not bad for the first cake I've made in 5 months.

I'd post a picture, but as soon as it cooled I cut it up, wrapped it up, and stuck two individual quarters in the freezer, whilst keeping the other half to eat. Errr...which is now mostly eaten. I think next time I do this recipe I may skip the apricots (or put in a variety of fruit and the proper caramel base), slice it through the middle, add some jam, and then cover the whole thing with frosting.

I hereby dub this "the poor boy's cake" (as I could get about 8 decent servings from it at a total cost of *maybe* $4 for the whole cake, so about 50 cents per serving).

Excelsior!

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