Okay...I promised I'd share...
My adventure with baking from scratch...
Remember, I was the one who said, "How hard can it be to follow a recipe?" Harder than you think...First off, no one told me that this made from scratch coconut cake would cost me $20.00 to make...I needed cream of tarter...eight eggs total...cake flour (there's a difference?)...vanilla, coconut (an actual coconut)...baking powder...kosher salt (again, there's a difference?)...maybe for you foodies out there this is staple pantry stuff but not for this three dinner rotation girl.
I have followed recipes...I make pretty decent cookies at Christmas and my macaroni and cheese is requested at family dinners...but for some reason when the recipe said mix all the dry ingredients together, I included the sugar...it is dry after all. So when I whipped up the butter and the recipe said now add the sugar, I knew I was dead in the water. Oh well, how much difference can the order make anyway? I bet some of you bakers out there are snorting at my goof right now...All ingredients in and accounted for...the batter seemed a little thicker than my usual from a box stuff but maybe that's what made from scratch looks like...into the oven with all three layers and now onto the frosting.
Five egg whites, a candy thermometer and a simple syrup later, I had white goo in a bowl...even after beating a full ten minutes there were no white peaks like the recipe said. I'm not a quitter but I do know when to say enough....Needless to say, I sent my daughter to the store for a couple of cans of white frosting.
I pulled my rather flat cakes out of the oven, let them cool...frosted them high and smooshed the coconut in all the way around and wa..la..
Doesn't look half bad...
so after I had filled up my family with dinner, I sliced her up...
a sample of my reviews...
it doesn't taste bad, just different...
kind of like coconut pancakes...
more like cookie dough...
it's a little doughy but the frosting's good...
needless to say, the magazine went in the trash...I am humble enough to admit that I am definitely a Duncan Hines kinda girl.
Happy Monday,
Patty
