- Chocolate Stout Cake (King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, p. 422)
Problem number one: I should have cooked the gnocchi slightly longer. The main bonehead move was using a regular pan instead of a nonstick. What was I thinking? I cooked a second batch and it turned out much, much better.
Big gloppy mess:
Since I've had really great luck with the recipes from King Arthur Flour's cookbook, I decided to make this bread. It looked easy, doesn't require a huge amount of kneading, and is relatively quick to make.
Things started off on the wrong foot when I dug through the newly-purchased groceries to find the yeast I had just bought. Uh... where's the yeast? Gone. I was cheated out of yeast! So I sent Larry off to the store while I tried to keep my oats warm (soaked in boiling water, but they were quickly cooling off).
Then everything came together okay after that. The dough mixed up fine, and I put it in a bowl and into my proofing box for a 1-hour rise. But it wasn't rising. Boiled more water, left it for another hour. It rose some, enough, I decided, and I shaped it into a log and put it in the loaf pan for the second rising.
Again, it wasn't rising. I ended up working on that thing until the next day. I finally just gave up and baked it. The top is completely flat. It's about the size of a half-slice of bread. Beautiful crumb, though, and super tasty. Just really stupid looking.
So what was the problem? I read back over the recipe and referred to the front of the chapter, where it states that instant yeast is NOT the same as active dry yeast. The Bread Baker's Apprentice (Peter Reinhard, bread god) says they're the same. I read a bunch of online forums and I'm not the only one that's confused. After searching everywhere, I discovered that no one sells instant yeast. So I ordered some from King Arthur Flour and made the bread again. Guess what? There's a difference. So the secret is true instant yeast. Who knew?
I have tried to make pumpkin pie on many occasions. I hate pumpkin pie - so gross. But Larry loves it and I know homemade must be better than purchased. So I keep trying. Every time something goes horribly wrong.
This time, it was the crust. How many times have I made a blind-baked pie crust that turns out just perfect? A lot. So why did this one shrink from a lovely unbaked crust into a tough, tiny shrunken crust? I don't know, but it barely took half of the filling. The rest went into ramekins.
Larry tried a piece, just in case. Sometimes things will seem horrible, but in the end they turn out fine. The only good thing about this pie crust is the outside crust. The rest was tough and chewy. The filling is allegedly good but I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Looks great, doesn't it? I was close to just throwing the whole thing in the trash. I mixed up the delicious lemon buttercream frosting anyway and applied a crumb coat, then stuck it in the refrigerator to firm up. Then I applied the rest of the frosting. It turned out not to be a complete disaster. The cake slices weren't as perfectly aligned as I would have liked, but the cake was good and looked decent at the end.
I tested this lemon buttermilk poundcake with a toothpick and I swear the toothpick came out clean. But as it cooled on the rack for 10 minutes, the middle sank like a tank. Inside the hole it was soggy and wet. I turned the oven back on and threw it in, knowing that it wouldn't rise, but hoping that it would at least finish baking.]]>
It smelled delicious as it was baking. Mmm, the aroma of butter and bananas. And burnt cake mix - it started leaking out of the bottom of my tube pan, which has a removable bottom. I knew I was going to have problems removing the cake from the pan, but I had a plan.
Once the cake was a lovely golden color, I removed it from the oven and left it to cool on a rack in the pan for ten minutes. When I went to remove the cake from the pan, boy was the pan hot. My initial instinct was to leave it in the pan longer, but I was tired and wanted to get things moving along.
I should have just trusted myself - impatience is rarely a good thing when it comes to baking. I used a small, thin knife to loosen the cake where it had leaked out. Most of the cake dropped nicely onto my plate, but one big chunk was still stuck to the pan.
