Chef Al dente: The 'I can't believe I made this cake'!!!

I don't normally find cooking very stressful (Yes, I'm very lazy and I hate to wash the dishes!) but this is one attempt that probably defines the word 'stress' pour moi :D I thought it turned out to be a very lame cake (considering the 'Eiffel tower' of expectation that I had built in my mind) and was quite disappointed but surprisingly, according to my hubby and his colleagues, it tasted great and they were quite impressed!! So the story goes like this...

During our trip to South Africa recently (stunning place by the way), we checked into one of our hotels. Quite tired as it was the end of a hectic day, I switched on the TV and on comes Lorraine Pascale ( I remember seeing her on one of the Masterchef episodes) with her show Baking made easy. I was amazed at how easily she whipped up one dessert after another with such ease; not to mention how stunning each one looked! That is when her recipe for 'I can't believe you made that cake' caught my interest. My hubby's birthday was coming up and I instantly decided (seeing how easily she made this stunning piece that looked more like art than a cake to me!) that I am going to make this for him. I was so excited that for next couple of weeks I would browse the recipe over and over again, to make sure I had all the ingredients and also to convince myself each time that this was really easy.

So on the d' day, I rushed to my kitchen first thing in the morning and started my art (err cake I mean). I whipped up the recipe for her cake - following it exactly to the T except that I added additional dark chocolate bits :D But after baking I found that for some strange reason, the cake didn't rise enough and it remained pretty flat. As per Lorraine, we have to cut this cake into two halves to layer it with butter cream frosting and I wasn't sure how I could do that (my first disappointment). Anyways I went ahead thinking I will try and cut it; I lifted the cake from the baking tin to realize that the bottom part was not completely cooked (my second disappointment). I had half a mind to drop the plan, chuck the cake into the trash and run to the nearest bakery to buy a decent cake for my hubby but I decided not to. Instead I rushed to the nearby grocery and bought ingredients to bake another cake (while I put the first one back into the oven)... This time I used a simple recipe for a chocolate sponge cake from goodtoknow recipes. The cake turned out fine but this was more spongy when compared to my first layer which had a brownie like texture. I was quite unsure of how to proceed as it all seemed like a mess to me (so much for my hopes of creating Lorraine's piece of art!). Considering all my effort and the ingredients I had used up, I decided to proceed anyways. I used the first cake as my base, put a thin layer of butter cream frosting and topped it with my second sponge cake. Finally I covered the entire cake with butter cream frosting and finished it off with fresh raspberries and the Galaxy chocolate flute bars. I had no clue how it would taste but it looked pretty decent at the end :D

And so folks, that was my baking adventure which seemed pretty much like a roller coaster ride for me! I am just glad that people enjoyed it. One of my hubby's colleagues was even kind enough to call and tell me how much she enjoyed it :) However, I doubt I will ever make another attempt like this but you never know... If you are interested in giving this a try I am leaving the links to both the recipes below. I am sure all you good , expert bakers out there would definitely find this recipe a piece of cake ;) So go ahead and impress someone on their special day!