Well, it was bound to happen, and it will happen again. I've had my first Project disaster. But, even so, it wasn't a total failure, as you can see from the picture to the left.This recipe seems easy enough. It starts out with a basic cake batter (creaming butter and sugar, beating in eggs and dry ingredients, etc.), with a lot of blueberries folded in at the end.
The batter is spread into a shallow baking dish and topped with the almond-egg-white-sugar topping.
This is the "before" picture. Isn't it pretty? Then it is baked for "50 minutes to 1 hour." (Ah, those cooking times again! The Book, my oven, and I are all still getting to know each other.) At 50 minutes, I tested the cake with a toothpick. Not done yet. I put it in for another five minutes. The toothpick came out clean enough, and anyway, the almond topping was starting to get a little overcooked, so I called it.
Here's the "after" picture. Isn't it pretty? The Book says to let it cool in the pan on a rack for ten minutes, and then invert it to remove it from the pan, and then invert it again on the rack to cool completely. Well, that's when the trouble came.
Here's the "aftermath" picture. Oh, the humanity! Despite the outward appearance and the clean toothpick, there was a big blob of undercooked batter in the middle. The cake cracked and split in two just like an earthquake, except it happened in slow motion. The Book's blurb about this recipe suggest trying this coffee cake if you're thinking of muffins, but you want to "avoid the bother of muffin tins." I wonder if I had used muffin tins, if it would have cooked all the way through. Now, I'm willing to take at least part of the blame for this since I didn't monitor my oven temperature throughout the cooking.Anyway, this "disaster" wasn't too bad after all. Most of the cake was edible, and the part that was edible was delicious! The cake is sweet and moist, and very blueberry-y. I don't think that you could get more blueberries in this cake if you tried. The almond topping gave the cake a nice toasty-ness and crunch.
Date Cooked: June 29, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A- (points off for poor execution)
1 comment:
I'm still bitter about the fact that this cake had a nut topping instead of a crumb topping. The crumb topping and the blueberries would have gone much better together. But, it was delicious even though it was busted.
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