Wednesday, April 13, 2011

W15, Day 2: Baking disasters

I have a confession to make:  I cannot bake an angel food cake.  I love angel food cake.  It's so fluffy, wonderful with strawberries and cool whip, low fat, and relatively healthy as cakes go.  Sounds great, right?  Except that I can't make it worth a darn.

Okay, I'll admit, I've only tried making angel food cake twice.  The first time, it exploded in the oven.  And caught fire.  No seriously, that really happened.  I wanted to make a treat to celebrate a special event for my husband so I decided to make him a cake.  But I wanted to be healthy too.  So I mixed together the cake and popped it in the oven, only to hear popping and cracking.  Soon I smelled smoke.  Opening the door, I saw bits of cake literally flying out of the pan and into the oven.  What the heck is that??!  I couldn't pull it out of the oven because it wasn't cooked yet.  In the end, I ended up with a gooey, scorched pan full of "cake".  My husband came home, walked through the door, and immediately asked, "What burned???"

Having been several years, I thought I'd try it again.  First, I'd like to note that despite following the directions on the box, I think I overcooked it.  But here's what it should look like:
Someone, obviously a not-angel-food-cake-challenged person, made a lovely cake here, crispy and golden on top, but it still looks light and fluffy.  Yum.  Okay, so mine doesn't look too far off.... :

Oh for goodness sake, it's just pathetic.  Apparently I should stick to cupcakes, but darn, I was really craving some angel food cake.  Okay, okay, yes, I did eat some of it anyway, despite being pathetic looking...it's still cake, right?  But it was hard on the outside and gummy on the inside.  The solution?  Obviously it's slather on some chocolate frosting and hope for the best.  *Sigh*

3 comments:

  1. The internet seems to say that if you overmix/overbeat the ingredients, it makes your cake all gummy. Maybe that's part of the problem?

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  2. It sounds like your oven is too hot? Sometimes the temperature gauge on the oven itself is off - get yourself a cheapy oven thermometer to set on one of the racks so you will know how hot your oven runs; then you can adjust as needed and your cakes will cook evenly.

    - chelsea

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  3. I was kind of wondering about that too, Briana. I guess I'm nervous about not mixing it enough AND of mixing it too much.

    Chelsea, I was thinking about the temperature thing too because this evening I made cupcakes (so easy, right?) and even though I set the oven at 25 degrees cooler than it was supposed to be and cooked it for 8 minutes less than was called for, they still came out a bit crispy. Yeesh.

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