Sunday 20 November 2011

Failed/successful chocolate cake + first ever bread

 Above is a chocolate cake I made on Friday night and failed. The reason it failed was because it was supposed to be baked in two separate dishes and made into a layer but because I only have one cake dish, I put all the batter at once and so it was still not baked after the time on the recipe. So left it in the oven longer (about 50 mins in total) until the inside was completely cooked. This resulted in a really uneven texture and super hard outside AND dry on the inside. It was embarrassing because I was planning to take this to the international Night where we danced Soranbushi. This event was for charity at a church and the entry fee was 5.00 and there was no way I was going to pay 5 quid and I heard you don't have to pay if you bring in some food so I took the opportunity to have fun baking. The event ended up with the church people singing modern-pop sounding songs which included words such as "You" and "God" and "Your love is more than enough" and "You'll never ever leave me" and they encouraged us to stand up and dance, which most people did. I did stand up and clap at first but the songs became more and more Christian and it felt like a complete advertisement so I stopped clapping and sat down. I was like, "fuck that I'm not falling for that trap."
Anyway, another reason the cake was a fail was that because I'm a cheap ass and I bought single cream (20p cheaper than double cream), the cream didn't whip. I whipped and whipped for 10 minutes and it didn't change at all. So I just poured it over the top and it looked like a pile of cow shit topped with bird shit.
Today, my Korean friends were going to cook us Korean food so I decided to bake another chocolate cake. This time, learning from the previous one, I baked twice and used double cream. I took the two thin cakes to the Korean friends' house and put it together just before eating. Seeing the below photo on facebook, my mum thought I whipped the cream too much but it was OK. ...At least better than yesterday. But there's still room for improvement.
The chocolate leaves were a success. I picked leaves when I came back from class on Friday. Melted 100g of cooking chocolate from tesco together with "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. Light" (cheap ass and low cal) poured the chocolate on the surface of the washed and dried leaves (should have been the back of the leaves) and put in freezer. The leaves come off easily when they are nicely cooled.
 As I still had a few hours before going to the Korean friends' house, I made a loaf of bread from scratch for the first time in my life. It came out good and it tastes nice but the texture is like unsweet cake. The reason for failure was probably because I didn't know how much 2.25 cups were and kept adding flour as i stirred in the bowl. I didn't knead it in the table because I don't trust the table to be clean although I wiped it before I started cooking. I also didn't use bread flour (used self raising flour) and baking soda (used baking powder). I also didn't use cornmeal because I didn't have it. I used flour instead but wasn't a good idea because it didn't spread, Should have just smeared butter (or rather, "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. Light").
But being the first time to bake a bread, I think it's pretty good.

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