Monday, January 4, 2010

Cake Wreck'd

One thing you should know about me: I'm not perfect. I make mistakes almost constantly really. This should be indicative of exactly how well my attempt at baking a Nutella-Swirl Pound Cake (Recipe helpfully supplied by Vince Lambert).

Anyway, here's the thing: I initially took to the recipe because I like Vince and because Nutella happens to be a Canadian dietary staple, outranked only by maple syrup. True story. Anyway, here's how it's supposed to go:

Nutella-Swirl Pound Cake

(Courtesy of Lauren Chattman at Food & Wine)
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
  • 4 large eggs, at room temperature
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 1/4 cups sugar
  • One 13-ounce jar Nutella
Start off by preheating the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit and greasing and flouring a 5x9" loaf pan, shaking off any of the excess flour. Whisk together the eggs and the vanilla in a glass measuring cup (why that is, I'll never know), and in another one, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

Push those off to the side for now, and with your totally kickass standing mixer, cream together the butter and the sugar together until delicious and fluffy. Mix in the eggs mixture, then add the flour mixture in thirds, beating thoroughly.


Now, to form the actual cake: Layer one-third of the batter into the cake pan, and follow it up by spreading half the Nutella on top. If this sounds, it's because it is. For those of you unclear as to the schematics, imagine trying to spread peanut butter on top of a piece of soggy bread.And the bread is in a four inch deep dish. Good luck with that. Anyway, just do it slowly and deliberately until it's all spread out.


Now, here's where I fucked up: The recipe says that you bake the cake for an hour and fifteen minutes. Obviously whoever came up with this number is a lying liar who tells lie, because that is NOWHERE NEAR close enough. You're best bet is to jab it with a fork every five minutes or so until it comes out clean.

The sad cake was horribly undercooked in the center, although on the plus side, the salvageable parts were pretty damn tasty. I mean yeah, half the cake was a soggy, sunken mess, but other than that? Not too shabbs. Just remember: Toothpick. Or fork. Whatever, just stab your baked goods.

2 comments:

  1. well the cake may not have looked great...but you cant say the same about the chef...he's hot enuff who needs cake :)

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  2. This is unholy, and you deserve to be shot for introducing me to this recipe. I'm trying to LOSE weight, dammit.

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