Thus far, my experience with baking has been something like this….
Yes, those are sugar cookies from a roll. My only job was to slice them, and place them an inch apart on the cookie sheet. Yet I still failed.
(They tasted good though).
So, as a proper stay at home mom, I’ve decided to earn my mom street cred, and learn how to bake. I made it a resolution, and for Christmas, asked for all kinds of baking supplies. I now have a KitchenAid Stand Up Mixer, as well as loads of baking dishes and pans.
Today is my husband’s birthday, and I decided to bake him a cake. In fact, I decided to bake him one of our favorite cakes, the Grapefruit Cake from the Hollywood Brown Derby at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. I printed up this recipe, and headed out to Whole Foods for the ingredients.
Cake flour? Well, I have regular flour. Must not be too different.
Can of Grapefruit? I was at Whole Foods….no grapefruit cans…. so I purchased three grapefruits instead.
Baking Soda? I have that at home.
Eggs? I picked up our standard Omega packed eggs.
A few more things like Cream of Tartar (which, I now know, by the way, is NOT in the dairy section), and I was on my way.
So apparently, I was supposed to sift the ingredients together. Seriously? Well, the kids’ sifter was snowed under in their sandbox, so I just poured the stuff together and then shook the bowl up a bit. When I added the baking powder, I realized we had two whole packages. One expired in June 08 and one expired in June 09. I chose the later one. But did I throw them out? Nope. (Note to self – throw out the crazy-expired baking ingredients please).
Then, I added the wet ingredients, including egg yolks. This, I can totally do. I expertly separated the eggs and added only the yolks saving the whites.
Then, I was supposed to beat the egg whites and the cream of tartar until it was stiff but not dry (insert your own joke here). Um. Beating? With the mixer even? But not stiff. Just egg whites. With cream of tartar in them. And maybe a little foamy? But not stiff.
And, now I’m just uncomfortable talking about this.
I poured my unstiff egg whites into the batter, folding it in (hey, I remember that from home ec…), and then added it all in the cake pan and baked it. Then I got working on the frosting.
When the cake was done, it was about 3/4 of an inch high. But the directions said I was to split the cake in half. Um no.
So….. it tasted good, had the consistency and size of a brownie, and had expired ingredients in it (oh yeah, the grapefruit juice I bought today at Whole Foods expired last month too).
Back to work on that resolution…
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Okay, laughing sooo hard!!! But in your defense, that was kind of an advanced recipe. Oh, and cake flour IS different than regular flour, but you can add cornstarch to regular flour to make cake flour — google it. You can also buy it in the store, but mine usually end up being one of those expired baking supplies. And for the record, I always seem to have at least 3 cans of opened baking powder — I don’t know why that stuff never gets thrown out.
Egg whites stiffen in a COLD bowl. They don’t tell you that so you’re forgiven. How about a cooking class? I’d do it with you!