Well, as you can read from the title of this post, my Chocolate Marble Cake: Failed Attempt. Looks pretty good doesn’t it? Let’s just drool a little more together before I unveil the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Unfortunately I have pictures to prove it. 🙁
If you have been following my blog for a while, you would know that I am not good in making cakes… yet still learning… I’m better at cooking dishes than baking cakes and pastries. They say baking is a science. It works on precise measurements and temperature. Tamper with it, and you will be courting disaster.
I like to tamper. I’m a tamperer. No wonder I cannot bake 😛 But i really wanted to master a couple of easy bakes instead of just throwing in the towel. Marble cake is supposedly one of the easiest cake to make. The first time I attempted this, it turned out like this..
Oh God, where do I begin? Well, that was the Sunday. All I wanted was to make the Chocolate Cake I’ve been dreaming for tea time. Moist, almost fudgey centre and a marble like crust on the top. Yes, that piece was a pleasure to eat. Unfortunately the whole cake looked like this. Burnt from bottom 🙁
When the time came for me to shut off the oven and turn it onto a wire rack, hoping that the cake will gracefully slide out. I should mention that at this point I had turned the oven off an hour before the recipe indicated because I was smelling a slight burning smell in my house (okay it wasn’t slight, but I was firmly planted in denial. Whatever.) and thought maybe that’s long enough. So, I turned it on a wire rack and to my surprise, it did gracefully turned out.
I took the cake out from the pan, stared at it sadly and shook my head. Sliced it and took a bite.
Oh sugar, it tasted WONDERFUL!
The crust top, though semi burnt, had a nice smoky aroma
As absolutely terrible as that looks, all was not totally lost. This side of the cake took the worst of it and was burnt to the bottom. After peeling away the black parts you see, I was actually left with an incredibly moist, smaller, Chocolate Marble cake.
Looks good huh!
Some of you may be wondering why I would even try to salvage this cake, let alone actually eat it, but I couldn’t waste it. I hate just throwing away money, and this cake had time and effort invested in it as well. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t serve this to people at a tea party! But since it’s just the 3 of us( me, mommy and sis) it wasn’t a big deal. I learned a lesson, if I ever do this again, to once in awhile turn the inner container that the cake bakes in. Since just one side of the cake was burned, I’m thinking that was the side where the heating element was, so if I turn it should bake evenly.
It wasn’t the prettiest cake I’d ever seen, but it was mine 🙂 But with a little trimming, the cake was fine!
If you’d like to make this cake and enjoy it all rather than just some of it, here’s my suggestions.
- Start with the recipe for Marble chocolate cake from The Bakery Cookbook.
- When you add the melted butter and cocoa powder to the egg yolks I urge you to wait for it to cool down, or you will curdle the yolks.
- When the recipe says to line the tray with baking paper, do as they say, or you’ll be scraping the cake out of the tin with a spatula.
- Check your oven is not too hot if you don’t want the whole thing to souffle up, burn on one side, and then sink to a quarter of its height.
My oven shelf was a little bit too higher hence bottom sides burnt a little.
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