The antics of the wrong/right chocolate cake

Yesterday I was in a Chocolate cake kinda mood.  I spent a couple minutes on Pinterest and found a couple of recipes that I wanted to try.  One was an "old school" mayonnaise cake.  The other was a chocolate layer cake.  I've been looking for a new chocolate cake recipe so I was anxious to get my bake on. :)

When I got home last night, I was rushing around and trying to make dinner while baking a cake (mistake one).  I grabbed the tablet (which is not as reliable as I would like) to find my recipe and went straight to my pins (mistake 2).  I was impatient so I went straight to find the mayonnaise cake and opened the link for the 1^st chocolate cake pin I came to.  I started rounding up my ingredients (mistake 3).  I started reading through the instructions and it said “prepare 3 pans”.  It didn’t’ surprise me that there was no order for mixing – many old recipes don’t have it.  I know that wet mixes with dry last so I started with the wet ingredients.  Buttermilk – darn – I didn’t have any (spidey senses started to tingle but I ignored them – Mistake 4).  I made buttermilk and added it to my eggs and vanilla.  Then added the brown and white sugar…then noticed I hadn’t added any oil/fat type ingredient…hmmmm I started looking through the recipe, looking for the mayonnaise…and that’s when I realized I had grabbed the wrong recipe!!  LOL  By that point I was committed.  Had I read further into the instructions, I would have noticed the part about creaming the softened butter with the white and brown sugar – bla bla – which I didn’t do (mistake 5) because I was rushing…so instead – the butter got mixed into the liquid mixture to become floaty lumps that would be incorporated into the flour mixture.  I wasn’t sure what to expect. The cake baked for nearly an hour (in a bundt pan) while I worked on the frosting of the wrong cake. Lol  It called for 12 oz of semi sweet chocolate – melted and cooled.  Well- all I had was the tail end of a bag of chocolate chips (a little over a cup’s worth) so I melted those and added some cream. 

In the end – I wound up frosting the cake when it was still a touch warm, so the butter based frosting kinda melted off.   I had to toss it in the freezer to set up a little better…it was quite an exercise in what NOT to do when baking a cake. Lol  Surprisingly, it actually turned out quite well.  It was a little fluffier than I would have liked (likely because of all the last minute beating to mix the butter lumps in) but not dry at all.  The frosting wasn’t quite as rich as it would have been if I had had the semi sweet chocolate to melt, but it was still really good. 

I’m anxious to try it again, though, and follow the actual instructions.  It’s still a cake I’d be happy to serve to anyone as is (but because I’m a cake snob – I’ll eat it myself and share the next one. J)  If you get a chance to try this recipe out - give it a whirl! :) You won't be sorry. :)  (just follow the instructions and avoid doing what I did. lol 

Thought of the day...

I feel 1000lbs lighter!!

The house is trashed.  Who am I kidding, it's always trashed.  It seems like the to-do list is a never ending game of domino's where one task has to be completed before another and so on and so on.  Recently, though, I've been hoping to get kiddo2 into the bedroom upstairs.  It's not going well...why??  Because of the domino's. 

This week, I've decided that enough is enough...I need to get her in that bedroom.  To do that - I must address the mess.  One of the main offenders in this house is "craft crap".  The huge down side to being a creative soul is the amount of junk you hang on to because you could do something cool with it later.  As a result, I have a TON of yarn, fabric, cross stitch stuff, card making stuff, cake decorating stuff...the list goes on and on and on.  Well - no more! 

Yesterday I tackled a project that wasn't technically on my to-do list.  I hit the closet at the end of the hall.  It's where my sewing stuff (some of it anyway) has been stored for ages, along with a few random toy items and my cross stitch stuff.  Well...I asked kiddo2 to empty a couple shelves in her bedroom under the stairs (she doesn't really use it anyway) and that's where I will move my sewing stuff for now.  As a result - the closet was emptied.  I painted the inside (Heaven help me if anyone ever inspects the quality of the crack filling in this closet - it's horrible!!)  But - I painted it anyway.  Then - I put the shelves back in - put pretty trim on the front of each shelf, painted the trim and used silicone to keep the shelves in place.  Then - I caulked all around them to make them pretty. :)  This morning, I went through my yarn stash - I cut it in half - easily!  The half I'm no keeping is going to a friend of mine (a fellow yarn hoarder), but I'm happy to enable such a fine addiction. :)  The other half is sorted neatly into the closet - AND - I even left some free space for "growth" or other projects that I might start...or simply a space to toss the rest of my crochet junk that I haven't found yet! lol 

*note* Before any fellow "Fiber Freaks" gasp that there is a litter box in the bottom of my yarn closet - I know what you are thinking.  Let me point out, though, that all my yarn is in ziplock bags...AND...said litter box is kept ruthlessly tidy (cuz frankly - nobody can stand the Ninja-Cat when his box aint tidy). lol  Plus - it's temporary.  Once the rest of the domino's fall into place - it will be moved to a different part of the house. :)

This is where the domino's start to work in my favor.  By putting all my yarn in the closet (and getting rid of half) I've freed up the space that it was taking up in the pantry.  (Hubby tossed it there out of desperation since he didn't know where else to put it).  It also frees up a good chunk of space in the downstairs closet!  Yay!!  So - now - the rest of the craft crap that has to come out of the upstairs room has a place to go - I can organize the other closet, finish the pantry etc.  No more waiting on domino's!  I also know that the key to this working is that I have to continue to down size to at least half of everything.  I've been working away at that over time - but I'm finally able to move forward, somewhat synchronized with my dominos!