Tuesday, September 4, 2012

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...

7 comments:

Cathleen | My Culinary Mission said...

Sorry to hear you had issues with the cake. It sounds like a lot of people did. On to the next recipe!

Delectable Delights with Rebecca said...

same issues... and I cooked mine for 20 extra minutes!

Cindy said...

That's what the extra strusel was for--to cover small imperfections! It was a delicious cake--but time consuming!

Catherine from www.praycookblog.com said...

I had two lemons and still not enough juice! Whew, glad this one is over! Bread ... now I can DO bread :)
blessings, Catherine
http://praycookblog.com/2012/09/twd-bwj-nectarine-upside-down-chiffon-cake/

Im At Home Baking said...

Sorry to hear it did not come out how you had hoped. I love reading how everyone's came out so different!

Teresa said...

We had a bit of an adventure with the lemon juice ourselves. It seems like this was a fussy cake for a lot of people. It's worth a do over though, because it's so delicious.

Cher Rockwell said...

Sorry you had such issues - I ended up using four limes to get enough juice. I thought your substitution was very creative.