I faced my baking nemesis head on again this year - a Black Forest Cake - and experienced the usual disappointment in my presentation.
Whilst weighing the butter, and subsequently the chocolate, I briefly registered in my mind that the amounts going onto the scale didn't tally well with the printed value on the package labels. I continued the recipe, nonetheless (ack, why didn't I pay attention to my fleeting mental query?).
I then couldn't work out why the cake didn't seem cooked as it usually does after the set time (20 minutes). I gave it another 10 minutes, and then another 8, which means it was cooking for almost double the recommended time. I reluctantly took it out, let it cool for 15 minutes, and then tried to get it out of the pan, unsuccessfully of course! There was no way that combination of ingredients was going to hold together ...
There was way too much butter and chocolate proportionately to the other ingredients for the gateau to hold together - I had to have mis-measured it, and should have reset my scale when I had momentary doubts. Well, the only thing for it was to move forward ... so I made a soft chocolate frosting and poured it over the whole thing, served it with black cherries, liqueur and whipped cream and declared it done - close your eyes and eat it like a pudding or trifle.
There was a LOT of cleanup to do afterwards ... the whisk in the melted chocolate wasn't balanced and flipped out of the bowl onto the floor and upwards onto my cabinets, I wasn't wearing an apron, and the powdered sugar was, well, powdery and vapory!
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