Cakeballin’, Pt. Deux

July 7, 2011

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So, I awoke today, ready to face another day of cakeballin’ — I prepared my two Gluten Free Cherrybrook Farms cake mixes, put them in the oven, set the timer and went about my morning. The timer went off, and I checked the cake . . . a little more time. Apparently, I turned the oven off and was just going to leave the cake in there for about 5 more minutes. Until . . . I forgot to set the timer. My mom arrived, and we started talking, went outside to bask in the morning sunshine and breeze, watching Atticus play. And I went back inside to check on something else, and the aroma of the delicious cake filled the air. But it should not have been filling the air as much as it did.

It should have been cooling. On a wire rack. On top of the cabinet.

NOT. STILL. SITTING. IN. THE. OVEN.

Seriously? Have I not been cooking for many decades by now? Have I not learned my complete and TOTAL dependency on kitchen timers? Good grief.

Gluten Free Dreams . . . Shattered

The good news is that I had turned the oven off. So, the innards of the blasted thing were salvageable, at least. I cannot say that I’ve ever gutted a cake before, but I figure if you’ve been party to gutting deer, squirrel, and fish, you’re qualified for cake. Unfortunately, instead of something like 50 cake balls I should have been able to make from the $49 cake mixes, I got about 18. I am going to be happy with that. It gives me a GREAT excuse to stop there with those little round balls of frustration and move on to Barefoot Contessa’s Coconut Cream Cake for all us grown ups. Okay, I’ll be honest. For me. I love it. I’ve only made the boxed cupcake version of them, but I trust that making the entire cake from scratch will be just as good or better.

If I can pay attention to the darn thing long enough and not burn it.

Somehow, Charbrilled Coconut Cream Cake does not have the same enticing ring to it.

What’s your worst kitchen disaster? Tell us. Come on. You can trust me.

4 responses to “Cakeballin’, Pt. Deux”

Brandi

Jul 7, 2011 at 3:28 pm

This particular family cooking disaster lingers from my childhood. We often we on family camping vacations and this particular Thanksgiving we decided to camp and cook a full blown Thanksgiving dinner. The men were in charge of meats (outside) and the women had everything else. Us children just wandered from trailer to trailer sampling. Dinner time finally arrived; we gathered around our make-shift dinner tables. My Memom was always in charge of the most delicious part of the meal; the dressing!!! As we all loaded our plates several people started commenting on the akward appearance of the dressing. To all of our sadness my Memom cooked the dressing with Saran wrap on top!!! Plastic wrap and Thanksgiving cuisine do NOT go together.
Now of course this is my “childhood” memory of this event. It may have, in reality, gone down with a lot more drama and possibly some cussing.

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1. themadrecadre
  
  Jul 8, 2011 at 10:02 pm
  
  That. Is. Awesome. It reminds me of a youth choir tour I went on in high school, and we sang in churches all in and around the Ozarks. Yipes. So, a few friends and I totally lucked out and stayed with a retired Arkansas State Representative and his lovely wife — they kept a beautiful vegetable garden and told really great stories, and she was a great cook. After dinner on the night we were scheduled to sing, we had dinner together, and they shuttled us back to the church. We were greeted by another {somewhat sullen anyway} member of our youth group, who was grumbling about how hungry she was and how horrible their host was. Apparently, she was this 70-some-odd-year-old lady whose big dinner for them was frozen pizza. Yep. You guessed it. She cooked it while still inside the plastic wrapper. It just felt sort of wrong for us to tell her we a roast and about 4 freshly picked and prepared vegetables from our hosts’ garden. Not right at all.
  
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LuLoLa

Jul 7, 2011 at 6:31 pm

One year for Christmas I decided to make banana bread for all of my clients. So I made a triple sized batch and started baking them off. After something like 20 loafs were baked and cooling I gave one a poke. Hard. As. A. Rock. ALL OF THEM. But they looked perfect! Why?????? Well, I had left out either baking soda or powder (one). It was so sad. $100 gone and no client gifts that year. In fact, I haven’t given client gifts since!

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themadrecadre

Jul 8, 2011 at 10:05 pm

Oh, Lu. That’s just awful. Isn’t that the most disappointing feeling? It’s why I could never be a professional chef. Way too much work for such a seemingly simple oversight to totally ruin. And you can’t get the money back. Wretched. Today, for the official “birthday cake,” I made a Barefoot Contessa Coconut Cream Cake recipe. I’m not icing it until tomorrow, but after cooling, of course, I had to level the bottom layer, and I skulked over that shaved cake wreckage until I’d eaten it all. Sooooo good. And I didn’t do a single thing to screw it up. Miracle.

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