Birthday Cake Bummer

Today is Jack’s birthday and I asked him what sort of cake he would like. He said he’d like a German Chocolate Cake. No problemo. Happy to do it. I like to bake/cook and, if at all possible, I prefer to do it “from scratch”.

So I dug out my old Betty Crocker cookbook and looked up a recipe. It looked a little time-consuming but, hey, it’s Jack…he deserves a birthday cake that is a little time-consuming.

Man, it was actually fun putting it together! Beating the egg whites separately, melting the chocolate, yadda, yadda, yadda…and the frosting took about 20 minutes to cook, too. Wow – what a good wife I am.

Well, I didn’t have the right sizes of cake pans. I needed three nine-inch round cake pans and I didn’t have them. So I got on the internet to see how to substitute. O.K., so I could use a bundt pan because it holds 12 cups of batter and three nine-inch pans hold 4 cups, each.

Long story short – the bundt pan was not the way to go…the batter, when it started to rise, bubbled all over the oven. “Well, that’s o.k.”, I thought. So it’s not going to be as tall as I’d like. It’s a bundt pan and I’ll just turn the cake over onto the cake plate and nobody will know. (Unless you were in the kitchen, that is, and could smell the burning batter.)

When I tested it to see if it was done, the knife came out nice and clean – great! So then you let it cool in the pan for about fifteen minutes before turning it onto the cake plate. I thought the top looked a little moist in one area so I tested that area with the knife….gooey. Rats! Obviously not baked all the way through in spots.

But you can’t get a good Irishman down. We don’t give up easy…I’m off to the store for three nine-inch cake pans and I’m going make another…

If it turns out as good as it should, I’ll let you know. And I’ll post the recipe. You can learn from the mistakes of others and I’m happy to oblige.