The honey cake saga

This evening was the monthly Sabbath potluck dinner at my synagogue. Since it was the Friday before the start of the Jewish New Year, we decided we were going to try to have a holiday themed dinner. I decided that it would be a great idea to make honey cake. I've made it the past two years and it's been a big hit. I wanted a taste, but didn't want the cake in the house. This plan seemed ideal.

The cake was as easy to make as I remembered. Throw a bunch of ingredients into a bowl in the proper order, pour it into a loaf pan, pop it in the oven... and a little more than 30 minutes later, cake will be done.

As I was cleaning up, I noticed that the flour I used was self rising flour. Wondered if that would be a problem since the recipe also called for baking powder and baking soda. Nothing to do but try to bake the cake and find out. Into the oven it went.

I turned on the oven light after about 13 minutes to see how things were looking. And they were fine. I'd been worried the cake might rise too much. At 13 minutes, didn't seem to be the case.

Totally different story at 30 minutes.

Holy cow!

That's what I opened the oven to find. A mess. Sometime between minute 13 and minute 30, the cake had exploded - all over the oven. It was crusty on top... and around the edges... and more like pudding in the middle. It was a mess!

Quickly ran over to my computer and typed "accidentally used self rising flour" into my search engine. I guess I'm not the only person to have made this mistake. I read that it could make a cake too liquidy. Um, yup. It will cause something to rise too much. Yes, it did that, too.

Clearly I couldn't serve this cake to the folks at the synagogue. But in the process, the Chef and I started picking away at the crispy parts, commenting on how delicious it tasted, even if it looked truly terrible. I had enough ingredients in the house (including all purpose flour) so I started again from scratch!

Cake #2 looked beautiful when it came out of the oven. Just perfect. But as it sat there, it got more and more and more deflated. The Chef was aghast. "You aren't going to bring that to the synagogue, are you?" Well, I sure didn't want a perfectly good cake... okay, perfectly good except for being deflated and cracked on top... in the house. That I could pick at and eat, bite by bite.

"I'm bringing it," I declared.

"Can you please make it clear that I didn't bake the cake?" requested the Chef. I told him I'd be happy to admit to my mistake, but that it still tasted delicious and everyone would enjoy it.

I had no plans to eat a piece, having eaten enough of the first disastrous cake at home. But there was my forlorn little cake, on the buffet table, covered with someone else's spiced apples to cover up the deflated, cracked top... with only a few pieces taken out of it. I felt so sorry for this maligned little cake that I had to take another little piece. Just a little one...

Before I go to bed, I'm off to track my daily intake in myfitnesspal. Then I'll remind myself that tomorrow is another day.

Day 10: 45.8 lbs to go