Baking Disaster

It seems that it's human nature to want to showcase positive results in whatever they do. For example the research articles published in renowned journals almost always show a positive finding in their experiment. That is something called the publisher's bias, or in other words, human's innate desire to show their best and hide the ugly. But much is to be learned about the occasions when things don't turn out the way we expected. I've decided to share with you the baking disaster that I just had last evening.

It was a cake meant to be for my friend's valentine surprise. For some reason I decided to bake the sponge in a tray instead of cake pans with the vision of making a modern looking square cake. It was only until I've popped it in the oven when I realised the tray was a tad too big and it ended up slanted to one side. Lopsided sponge aside, the mascarpone frosting turned out tasting great but was very much on the sloppy side. I blame it on the fact that my friend didn't want me to add more cream to it which probably would have made it stiffer for frosting the cake.

In an attempt to salvage the disastrous cake we ended up with this:

A coffin cake. For my friend's Valentine Surprise.

Perhaps not the most appropriate design for the occasion.

It looked so ridiculously ugly that I had such a good laugh just looking at it. I've never seen anything as badly 'decorated' as this and whilst embarassing it was still worth it purely for the laugh factor, at the expense of my friend's valentines gift of course. But it tasted great. And it's the taste that matters isn't it? This, coming from a person who normally thinks presentation is as important if not more so than taste.

An update

It's been a while since I posted anything after my red velvet cake. The last week has been absolutely manic. A journey back to the UK took me almost 24 hours. I had a cold throughout that journey. My term started the day after I arrived with lectures from 8 to 5. On top of that I just found out that my results this year will contribute the most to my degree's final classification. Did I mention the pressure? If that's not enough I was greeted by a broken oven door on the first day back in my flat.

But I do believe there's a silver lining to every cloud. At least I'm now back on my proper degree and I'm currently learning about some very interesting subjects (hint: women and babies). On top of that my landlord has allowed me to use her oven (which is a million times better than the other standard student flat oven) while she tries to either fix the oven or get a new one. The temptation now is for me to bake some of the croissants that I've made and frozen much earlier in June before I left the country. Should be interesting since my landlord's got a fan oven which should theoretically allow my croissants to bake more evenly. I will, however be on placement somewhere 2 hours away from where I currently live and so it'll be a while before I do any serious baking.

While I was at home during summer I managed to bake a chocolate and caramel cake, which I (at that time) thought was too ugly to be taken picture of, which in hindsight I regret. I also made more croissants few days before I left home and they were very well received, which is always a good ego boost. :D

Anyway here are the pictures:

The countdown has started

I will be sitting for my second to last paper tomorrow and I cannot wait for it to be over! The paper after that does not test one's factual knowledge which means my revision pretty much ends the minute I finish the exam tomorrow!!!!!

Exams, exams, exams...

It's exam season and I've got four papers coming up having just done one on Monday. I've got another paper this week, two more next week and by then I would be relatively free as the last paper can't be prepared for. Would definitely like to bake something then. The trouble is to find a recipe from the my two-page long to-bake list.