(or why I should never bake)
First, a little background. I am not a trained chef. I am not a particularly good chef. I do, however, have a girl scout cooking badge and took cooking in both junior high and high school and at the time successfully made many dishes including hollandaise and cheese soufflé so it cannot be said that I am entirely without technique. I can also follow a recipe and usually produce something reasonably palatable.
This story begins when I forgot my employee’s birthday last week. To be fair, she is the one who usually coordinates the birthday celebration, consisting of lunch, a cake and cards/gifts as well as some painfully bad singing of Happy Birthday (just unrecognizable enough that we don’t violate any copyright laws). I, of course, felt terrible and apologized profusely. I also resolved to make it up to her with a celebration today. I vowed to myself to make her a cake myself, rather than buying one.
Unfortunately, after reading the recent Dope thread about how long past their expiration dates people keep pantry items, I went and purged my own pantry. So, on setting out to make a cake on Sunday afternoon, I realized that the only cake mix I had had been consigned to the trash, since it had expired in 2008. Now a sensible person would have gone to the store to purchase a new mix. But I quickly took inventory of my pantry and refrigerator. I had flour, sugar, butter and eggs. Surely these would suffice to create a cake.
I then went to my trusty bookshelf and pulled out The Joy of Cooking. There were many cake recipes. However I noted that all of them required baking powder. I searched my shelves in vain. Again, the sensible thing would be to purchase baking powder. But having watched too much Food Network (ie Chopped and Cutthroat Kitchen) I was aware that there were substitutes available. But where to go to find them?
My next trial-Julia Child. I knew that her recipes were supposedly foolproof. Perhaps she had one that would suffice. I turned to the cake section and immediately found her basic spongecake recipe which required only flour, sugar, eggs, and butter. However, I am not a real fan of spongecake in that I thing it tastes like a sweet sponge. I do like lemon cake but had no lemons. I did, however, have oranges Surely an orange spongecake would be delicious. I could even make a glaze with orange juice and powdered sugar which would be delicious.
I flipped through the cookbook and to my delight found a variation on the spongecake called orange-almond spongecake. I had no almonds but between the two recipes I could do something. The recipe said it made one 8 inch cake. She said to fill an 8 inch pan to 1 inch from the rim and it would rise to fill the pan. This sounded like a good amount for 3 people, particularly since I only had a couple of cups of flour.
I carefully set about creating my mise-en-place. I melted my butter in the microwave (I only had salted but I could cut down the salt elsewhere), separated the eggs and measured out the sugar into the egg yolks. I then went to get my handy hand mixer to beat the eggs and sugar.
Here I ran into the first significant problem. I happen to have somebody who cleans for me occasionally and he does a great job but has a habit of wanting to put everything away. I have 42 inch cabinets and 9 foot ceilings in the kitchen. The mixer should have been above the stove but those cabinets had been filled with the old grocery bags I save for cat litter. I searched every cabinet, over the stove, under the stove, over the sink, under the sink, above the refrigerator, in the island, without luck. I climbed up on chairs and on the stove to search the uppermost cabinets. I found my ice-cream maker and my George Foreman grill but no mixer.
At this point, after an hour of searching, a lesser person would have caved, but I remembered that at one point I had decided that I could cook and had purchased a whisk which was upstairs in my bedroom closet. If those chefs on television could use a whisk than I could too. Up the stairs I went to locate it in my closet. After a brief interlude to eject cat #1 from my closet (where he knows he is not allowed) waving the whisk in one hand and a hissing spitting cat held by his scruff in the other, I took another short break to remove cat #2 from the closet (where she had run while I was ejecting cat #1) and I was ready to trot back downstairs to finish the cake.
I consoled myself that at least the eggs were now room temperature, which I knew from Food Network was optimal for baking. The egg yolks and sugar were whipped together, although not as smooth or light as they would have been with a mixer. The next step was to zest an orange. I knew that my handy box grater was perfect for this task and I knew right where I kept it-right next to the mixer! Fortunately, having searched the entire kitchen earlier I realized that I had not seen a sign of the box grater. I briefly considered peeling the orange and zesting by hand but quickly realized this was beyond my skills. I searched for an alternative and found my metal vegetable steamer. Luckily, it was bought when I was a student and was therefore a cheap piece of crap, meaning that the holes were punched out poorly and were rough on the reverse. I turned it over and easily zested the orange with only about half the zest spread around the kitchen and a few puncture wound to the orange from the legs of the steamer. Juicing the orange was easy and I even located a strainer to strain the juice. The recipe called for 1/3 cup of juice. I was unable to locate my 1/3 cup measure before realizing that I was using it to measure out cat #2’s food since she was diabetic and on a strict diet. However, I was able to estimate using a 1/2 cup measure.
Next came the flour, which I neglected to sift since #1) I didn’t think you had to sift flour anymore and #2) my sifter was also my strainer and was filled with orange innards and even if I washed it, I wouldn’t be able to dry it well enough to avoid clumping. It was around this time that the thought crossed my mind that maybe without baking powder I might really need cake flour rather than all-purpose flour but flour’s flour-right? The next step was to add the ground almonds which I didn’t have so I added in some extra flour until it seemed right. Here I noticed that the orange-almond variation did not use any butter. I threw away the melted butter. The recipe called for almond extract so I substituted vanilla extract. After all, vanilla and orange go together in creamsicles so it couldn’t be that bad.
I had finally reached the point where I got to beat the eggwhites. I actually had cream of tartar and I must say I did an admirable job. I achieved stiff, but no overwhipped peaks. They were glossy and beautiful. I turned the bowl upside-down over my head and they stayed put. I admired the peaks when I held up the whisk. I was proud of my aching arm and shoulder. I carefully folded the whites into the batter, yielding a lovely light mixture with a sweet orange taste. It didn’t look like a lot and I thought about adding an extra eggwhite or two but I didn’t want to mess with the recipe too much and my arm hurt.
I should also mention that I didn’t actually have an 8 inch pan, so I used my Bundt pan. I knew it wouldn’t fill all the way, but I figured it was only for 3 people and as long as it was a couple of inches high it should be OK. I carefullt filled the prepared pan, slid it into the oven and set the timer.
Julia said that the cake should rise about an inch and to take it out when it started to sink slightly. Needless to say, the cake did not rise an inch. It may have risen slightly, but not as much as a cake mix would have. Therefore, it was hard to tell if it was sinking. At the allotted time, I gave it a couple more minuted to make sure it was done and tried all the alternative tests I knew. The top sprang back lightly when touched and a toothpick inserted came out clean. I figured it was done.
I let it cool. It certainly didn’t seem to be more than an inch to an inch and a half high, but I figured with a little glaze it would be OK. I turned it out onto a plate when it had cooled and found it a little brown on top but only minimally cracked. I also found how absolutely ridiculous a once-inch high Bundt cake looks. I decided to check at the crack to see if it was inedibly dense and managed to increase the crack so that it looked even worse. The only solution was to cut a slice of that area and taste it. I have to say that it was not terrible dense, and actually tasted like a sweet orange sponge. That was when I realized that I really really don’t like spongecake because it was objectively delicious. It was also a mess and I knew I couldn’t bring it in the work.
Luckily, in my kitchen searches I had come across a brownie mix with a “best by” date on 3/18/15. I figured it wouldn’t be the best, but at least it would be decent. Besides, brownies are almost like cake-right? It only needed an egg, oil and water, and even better, could be mixed with a spoon, no whisking needed! I quickly mixed it up and went to read the baking time where I discovered the small print giving the instructions for cake-like brownies, which would needless to say, have been preferable. In any case, I couldn’t change now so into the oven it went and I realized why I hated making brownies-you never know when they are done. They give you a time range but tell you to take them out before they are fully set. I split the difference and cooked them to the dead center of the time range. I ten put them in the microwave to cool overnight (because cat #2 is diabetic and I really didn’t want cat hair on them anyway).
In the morning, I had a successful pan of brownies. I stopped at CVS on the way to work for some canned frosting to make it look at least a little like a cake (because at this point I was beyond caring) and served it up to my staff, who scraped off the frosting but enjoyed the brownies. I ate some of the orange spongecake for breakfast and found it actually a good breakfast kind of sweet. Now my only goal is to find my mixer. My cleaning guy is Thai so I am thinking of printing out a picture of a hand mixer and a picture of a box grater from the internet, posting them on the refrigerator, and asking them if he knows where they are. Otherwise, I plan to replace them
Oh-and on my next shopping trip I am stocking up on packaged cake mix, although I may buy some baking powder just in case.
