By geralt on pixabay.com
Travel posts will resume next week. You expected a regular posting schedule? This accound is called random for a reason ... What did you expect?
Each year for my birthday party, I bake the same cake - a "Death by Chocolate". Each year, I find a way to fuck it up. One might think I'd improve over time, but somehow, it just gets worse. But I love this cake too much to just ... stop doing it.
This September, I was mostly not at home (vacation, steemSTEM meetup, such stuff), which is why I celebrate my birthday with my friends this late.
This morning (ok technically yesterday because the dough needs to rest in the fridge overnight) I started preparing my cake, determined to not ruin it.
What are the ways to ruin it?
The problem is, that the dough has to be baked without the filling, while still maintaining a "rim" so the filling doesn't run out. That's surprisingly difficult. In past years, I struggled with this a lot, more than once creating a flat dough surface.
Two years ago, my grandmother suggested that I'd use dried peas or beans to act as the filling while baking, and then remove them. Great idea grandma!
The thing is, we both had a different picture in mind. What she was thinking of was this:
For some reason, using a baking sheet never, ever crossed my mind, until I was picking out dried peas from my dough ...
Oh well.
Another issue are the raspberries. They go between the dough and the chocolate filling. I use frozen raspberries, and the first time I made the cake, I added them in their frozen form.
They thawed.
The dough absorbed all the moisture.
The dough ended up being soup.
Now, I thaw the raspberries and then smush them together, draining most of the liquid. Nice and clean.
Thinking I avoided fucking up this year, I happily proceeded making the chocolate cream (cream, milk, sugar, butter, chocolate. Truly, a healthy dessert).
And while I was stirring and stirring and stirring I noticed that ... something was off. The chocolate refused to smoothly combine with the other things. And it only got worse! In the end, I had chocolate, covered by a thick layer of liquid fat.
I'm not entirely sure why this happened, but my guess is that I was stirring too hard.
Discarded it, which looked like someone shat in my trashcan. I spare you the picture of that.
My boyfriend was nice enough to go buy new cream and chocolate, I still had butter, milk and sugar. Repeated the process, and ta-da!
That's what it's supposed to look like!
Happily, I added it to the cake (and fake muffins).
Ah, so I could salvage the the situation. A happy ending is always the best ending, right?
After the cake cooled down a bit, I opened the fridge to cool it down completely. And as I put it down, I saw ...
... the butter.
Which I had put back in the fridge after the first failed attempt.
Which I hadn't taken out again.
Which was now missing from the chocolate filling.
The filling that was hardening suspiciously fast.
OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE!