The Results Are In!

I'm using this wonderful shade of brown as an ode to my birthday cake bake-off. Although I didn't make chocolate cake...

So! I survived the night. Last I left off, it was 11 at night and I was going to start baking. And I did. Until 2am. Yup.

One of the Uruguayans' birthday was last night and Dario went to Club Mambo to help celebrate. I didn't feel like going, and I think I decided to stay up and bake, much like a parent stays up and reads the paper when their teen goes out for the night, to make sure he got home safely. He is very responsible and never drinks and drives, but we do live out in the country and the windy, curvy roads at night make me nervous of the other people who might not be as conscience of others' safety.

So I baked. Let's keep in mind people, that the idea of baking a cake, like from scratch, had never even occurred to me. It was beyond my realm of comprehension that some people BAKE FROM SCRATCH for their friends and family. I thought everyone just bought the box recipes, if they even did do the baking themselves. So, these have been my first attempts at baking a cake, and I'm sure I've committed some common pitfalls along the way, which I'll explain. And if anyone has the answers to why some things happened the way they did, please offer your advice and suggestions.

The first recipe, which I was dying to try, was from Sylvia Weinstein's book Sensational Cakes. It calls for a couple of key ingredients that the other recipes didn't have, like ginger and sour cream. I can tell you that the batter was absolutely delicious! And fluffy and light, just beautiful! I prepared everything perfectly and carefully (to my knowledge). The only question I had was about the amount, because it's supposed to yield 3 round pans worth, and I used 2 9" rectangle glass dishes to bake them in, and placed them on the top rack, one level middle of the oven.

After the recommended 45-50 min was up, the cakes were perfectly golden yellow and aromatic. I removed them from the oven to cool. After about 15 min, I removed them from the pans to find that the middle hadn't cooked all the way through. This is where I may have gone wrong...I placed them back in the oven after placing the rack right in the middle of the oven. I cooked them for about another 10-15 min, took them out to cool...and went to bed.

The second cake I was baking simultaneously came from the blogspot blog, Cakerella. It proclaims that the buck stops with this yellow cake recipe. the pictures verified what I was looking for, that sponge-y, hole-y, textured looking cake, moist, yellow. Naturally, I had to try it.

This batter, too, was dee-licious! It was similar to the first, minus the ginger taste, and a little less rich. This time, since I was running out of baking pans, I dropped the batter into a 13x9 baking pan. It had to bake for 10 min more than the suggested 25-30 min, but when it was done, another beautiful display of cake! The secret to moisture retention in this recipe says to wrap it in saran wrap after cooling a bit. I had to improvise with plastic grocery bags, which I'm not sure has the same effect or not, but I'm assuming the point was to suffocate the cake with its own humidity (hey, I told you guys I wasn't a baker. I don't know what the baking terms for this process would be!).

Speaking of improvisation, it's a tool that I am coming to learn and utilize more often, after spending the last 7 years with my husband, Dario, who is originally from Uruguay. He, along with all the other countrymen from Uruguay that I've met, have an incredible ability to make, fix, create things that us Americans aren't capable of. If something, even so slightly, is broken or not working, we just throw it away. Dario constantly scoffs at how much I waste (and how little I know) and will return a short while later with the newly transformed, and once again usable item. Some examples range from the most simple things - like when I bought a new mailbox, the little plastic thingie for the flag broke and I thought I'd have to go buy a whole new one, and Dario simply found a piece of metal, tied it around the piece, and it never again has been a problem - to more extreme cases. For example, he bought a car he was enamored with a couple years ago, which in my opinion was better fitted for scrap metal. He took his time, adding a body kit, pasting tinted paper to the windows, putting in a system, changing out the rims, all on his own!...okay, no big deal, right? Then he sanded it down, primed it...and most recently...PAINTED IT! He painted a car! And it looks awesome! It's completely transformed, and now everywhere we go, people stop us and ask us about this former piece of scrap metal!

He knows how to horesback ride (bareback), he could plant and maintain a vegetable garden, install hardwood and tile floors, take apart, clean, and repair a spray gun machine, make a homemade deodorant AND wine, and the list goes on. I believe it is a fundamental difference in the two cultures. In Uruguay, there were many times in his life when there wasn't money even for food (which is also why he knows 28 different ways to make rice more interesting tasting). In Uruguay, there's no such thing as broken, and that's why their resourcefulness is a necessity of life. Not that all of Uruguay has and needs to learn these lessons. Of course, there are many successful and wealthy Uruguayans that have never gone a day hungry. But my husband was not one of them, and it's one of the reasons I respect and love him, and why everyday he continues to fascinate me with his knowledge and creativity.

So, back to the cake. This morning I awoke anxiosuly anticipating the results of my cakes! I gave the buttercream icings another whirl with the mixer to freshen them up, spread it on the cakes, and voila!

I cut myself a piece of each cake and dug in. The Weisntein cake was still undercooked, and the icing that I accompanied this cake with was a failure (too buttery and weird consistency). However, the cake was moist and very good. The only change I look forward to making is adding a wee less ginger and sour cream because the flavors were a little overwhelming.

The Bakerella recipe was initially my favorite one. There were a couple of drawbacks. It was a little dry, even after I poked the holes in it with a straw and coated it with the sugar water mixture. This was done the day after however, and maybe it has to be applied as soon as the cake was cooled. Or it could've been the grocery bags too :) The other disappointment was that this cake had more of a pound cake consistency, not the fluffy interior I was expecting. The icing, however, which was also from the same recipe, was AWESOME!!!

I shared some with my niece, Azul.
She liked it, of course. She has a MAJOR sweet tooth!

Even Dario had to admit that they came out pretty good, especially for a novice cake-baker! This was his exact reaction - - I think he pretty much knew I'd knocked him out of the competition.

These are the questions I have if anyone (as if so many people are reaading this..."anyone" refers to you, Jenn and Britt!) knows the answers:

1. What ingredient(s) do I add/take away/use less of to make the cake super moist?

2. Why did the second cake come out more poundcake-like and dense, and not fluffy and songe-y and hole-y?

End

(The first part of this blog was written a couple days ago. Let's check in with the contestants to see what they've been up to now that some time has passed, and get the final results).

3 days later: "Where are they now?"

So, now I'm addicted to cake-baking (another venture I suppose!). I'm going to try a couple more versions of these two recipes and see which turns out best. I'd like to try the Bakerella recipe with cake flour instead of all-purpose, I'm going to try to "wash" it with milk to see if it'll get really moist, and try the ginger one with the other icing that I like better.

Dario, in the meantime, has vowed to avenge his loss.

He's trying more recipes.

I will post a recipe once I have the perfect and exact one. For now, all I can do is think about cakes and wanting to try different versions, and add a touch of that, subtract a little of this.

Therefore, the FINAL RESULT IS THIS: After all's said and done, between all of the trial cakes I'll make, I'll probably have spent more than the $55 it would cost to just buy another homemade recipe cake from the home-based business lady in the neighborhood!

Happy Baking!