TWD- The Sinking Nectarine Cake

 If anyone has ever taken a 4-H baking project, let me start by saying that I would be lucky to eek out a participation ribbon at the county fair if this was being judged by 4-H judges.  A couple bonehead moves on my part turned what should have been a lovely cake into an ugly cake.

 

My first mistake was I melted an entire stick of butter in the pan.  I didn't realize the mistake until I had already fanned out all the nectarine slices.  So I had to sop up extra butter with paper towels.  My second mistake was I only bought 1 lemon.  I don't know if I thought a loaves and fishes moment would happen upon me and produce 1/2 cup of lemon juice out of one hard tiny lemon, but that didn't happen.  So I had to fake lemon juice with lemon juice+lemon zest+water+vinegar.  Maybe this works fine for making a vinaigrette, but it didn't work out so well for making a chiffon cake.

 

 

 

At 45 minutes the cake was puffed up like a proud peacock, but the center was still liquid.  At 50 minutes I thought it was done.  Then the crack happened.  And the crack revealed that the center was still a mess of liquid.  So I put it back in the over for an additional 15 minutes.  I never could get the center to bake properly (probably all that excess butter was bubbling up).  So after 25 minutes, I turned it over and hoped for the best.  Well the best was a tasty cake but with the Louisiana style sinkhole.   In the picture below I covered up the sinkhole with the leftover crumb topping.

I think if this cake was executed properly, it would be swoon worthy.  But I think I would decrease the ginger to 1/4 tsp.  I noticed a somewhat bitter aftertaste that I thought was from too much ginger.  But if only too much ginger had been my biggest problem...