Time-out for cake

Sheeeeeeeeee . . . don't tell; I'm supposed to be writing my thesis.

But thesis-writing has the amazing ability to make one both quite hungry and suddenly full of inspiration for every other writing project one has ever contemplated. Ever. So allow me a little cake-writing before returning to my technical design reports.

I am not the baker of my family. Shocking, I know. But growing up I was never as eager to be attached to the oven as my little sister; the attachment to baking came later, when I had to start consistently feeding myself. 'Twas her who collected cookie recipes and could time every element of a meal to be done within minutes. I could . . . well, I could turn out a decent batch of brownies, but more ambitious projects tended to run into problems.

This is still true whenever I go home, though my family loves me dearly and lets me bake for them anyway. So shortly after Christmas I decided to make a cake just because, and my little brother (~10) agreed to help me on the assumption I would turn out something different.

That I'm good at--trying new and random recipes.

I opted to keep it pretty simple and stick with my favorite chocolate cake recipe, but wanted to dress up the frosting a bit. So I wanted to make a meringue and toast it briefly under the broiler a la baked Alaska. I told my little brother it would taste like marshmallows; the concept of making your own marshmallows prompted by serious and contemplative looks, but he was willing to go with it. He likes marshmallows.

So we beat up egg whites and sugar over heat, and then beat them some more (see here for details, but I stopped pre-butter) and duly tasted the sticky white stuff and pronounced it delicious enough to slather on our waiting cake layers. No need to be pretty here, just swirling it around with a big spoon while my assistant tackled the leftovers in the bowl. When all the cake was well coated, I popped it into the oven under the broiler for a couple minutes.

Now, my mom's oven is a bit old and wearing out, and so things don't always work as expected. For instance, the oven light had burnt out, making it difficult to check on things. So you can imagine my puzzlement when I turned back to the oven and the door-glass was clearly allowing light to exit the oven. Because somehow there was light in the oven that needed exiting. Wait . . . is My CAKE ON FIRE?



Yes. Yes it was.

So I pulled it out of the oven with the entire top in flames, though thankfully they extinguished once removed from the heat source, and stared at the charred top. Meanwhile, my little brother is giggling behind me because I just made a big BURNT marshmallow cake.

But being true aficionados of campfire roasted (aka blackened and burnt) marshmallows, we ate it anyway, peeling off the burnt top layer. Because my family loves me like that. And the meringue tasted great.

And when I returned to my own kitchen, I made a strawberry cake. And it turned out lovely.


Now, back to the thesis!