high-bar baking

I thought my downfall was my hubris. Is it better or worse that it was actually my own stupidity? 

And I wish this was a purely philosophical question.

I set out to make Zoë’s Devil’s Food Cake this weekend, because chocolate cake is life itself and because I needed to get rid of some cream cheese frosting. Can’t have any more small Tupperwares languishing in the freezer than is absolutely necessary. 

I’ve made this recipe before, and I thought I remembered something about it being a little bit hinky with the altitude. Nothing crazy, but I figured I’d get out ahead of it. Cut the leavening in half, leave nothing to chance. 

Eighteen minutes into baking, I can smell the cake. It smells amazing! Excited, I peek through the oven window to see how my babies look. First of all, they are liquid lakes. That’s a huge red flag, because if I can smell the cake it means it’s progressed quite a ways in the process. Secondly… they have not risen. Not “oh, that’s a little less than I expected,” no, they are flat. Not one bit of lift. 

Well, shoot.

What do you do? You finish baking them and reassess once they’re out. Ok, after obsessively peering through the window seven more times. They’ll be fine, I think, and everyone knows I can bake already. They’ll taste the same!

What had I even done? I’d halved the baking powder, how could it be this bad? Then I checked the recipe again. It didn’t call for baking powder, hun. It called for baking soda. Compounded mistakes. Arrogance and folly; you’re never above either one. Or both at the same time, apparently. 

When I took them out of the oven, the situation had not improved. Still no rise. I let them cool, then turned the layers out of the pans. Hockey pucks. If I’d been commissioned to create a lifelike replica for a Stanley Cup party, I was in business. Sadly, this was not that day. 

I was almost just going to roll with it. Then I noticed that one of them had cracked. The interior had no crumb. It was a solid mass. I said, I’ll try a little nibble and then evaluate. Taste your food, that’s a great rule of thumb!

And it was disgusting. Tasted fine (like I said it would!), but it was rubbery. Chewy and dense (not in a good way) and solid and just… like rubber. I couldn’t serve it.

So I had to start over again. Thank goodness buttermilk cartons always have too much in them anyway. Of course, I still had to go back to the store, because I realized 116 grams into pouring the sugar that the remaining 284g did not exist in the house. That was a fun second trip in 1 hour. 

But it turned out lovely! Zoë makes a wonderful cake, and chocolate is always, always a hit. 

Lessons here: every day is a new day. Your experience only matters as much as you put it to use. Don’t be afraid to start over. Even if it’s late, even if people are on their way, even if you didn’t have this do-over on your bingo card. Even if you simply do not want to. 

Sometimes, the only way out is through.