The Worst Cake Ever Made.

Carrot cake
Originally uploaded by midwestgrrl

The Worst Cake Ever Made is not the cake in this picture. That was a good cake. Very good, even. Everyone said so.

Last night I tried to make a Christmas log cake, in practice for the upcoming holiday season. I used one of the most simple-sounding recipes I could find, one that did not involve making my own simple syrup or an advanced pastry techniques certificate from the French Culinary Institute simply to understand the directions.

Now, I am by no means an expert in the realm of pastry, but I'm also not an idiot. I use the proper ingredients and the proper equipment. So, I don't really understand how this cake ended up to be a disaster in every possible way.

I had to make a marzipan pastry cream filling that necessitated making a custard, which went fine. You want a custard? I will make you a fucking custard and you will love it. The jam-up came when I had to put the custard into a food processor with the marzipan. First of all, my "food processor" is a Black and Decker mini-prep, which replaced the much nicer Cuisinart version I killed several years ago. The Black and Decker one now smells like burning when I use it, which I suppose is the universe's way of telling me to BUY A REAL FOOD PROCESSOR, ASSHOLE.

The marzipan -- or should I say almond paste, another close-but-no-cigar mistake I made -- was not blending nicely into the custard. The finished result tasted good but was not a nice consistency. Nonetheless I popped it into the fridge and let it chill for a day.

Let's see, what went wrong next? Oh yes, the cake. I did everything right for the cake until I folded the flour in. What looked like a beautifully smooth, fluffy batter was actually hiding huge pockets of unmixed flour, which showed up very unattractively in the finished cake. So, the finished consistency of the cake was "rubbery fried egg with flour pockets," which, let's face it, is not something you would want to try if you saw it on a menu.

Then, I tried to roll the cake, which was just laughable, so I cut it into four oblongs, figuring that maybe against all odds the rubberyness would go away and the flour pockets would get absorbed into the cooled cake. I am really quite stupid at times.

I thought perhaps the chocolate frosting -- which, when you consider the amount of cream, butter and Callebaut that went into making it -- might turn out all right. And it did taste good. If I'd wanted it to use for a dipping sauce, it would have been great, but no amount of cooling would have turned that stuff into frosting.

So the whole thing -- eggs, whole milk, almond paste, almond extract, heavy cream, $10 in chocolate, untold amounts of butter -- went into the garbage. It was horrible. I think I'll make banana bread for Christmas and stick a sprig of holly on top. Voila, happy fucking holidays.