A caketastic disaster

I don't procrastinate. I just don't.

However, I procrastinated on posting this Daring Bakers challenge because I wasn't happy with the end result of my cake.

I watched many an episode of Good Eats when I had access to cable. I watched as Alton recommended, among other things, a lazy susan and a cake stand in order to ensure a good-looking cake as a result of proper slicing and frosting.

I convinced myself, "It's not worth it to buy those things. I can totally do this on my tiny kitchenette table with no extra plates. I don't need a spatula for frosting!" I was kind of wrong.

I went out on a limb and tried some things that were new. I stretched myself too thin the day I made the cake. I had a guest over and the frosting and the melted chocolate and oh my gosh it was a huge mess, maybe too much for my tiny kitchen to handle.

It wasn't pretty at all, but it tasted good. That's worth something, right?

I swear there are four layers of cake in there. They didn't come out even. But I numbered them for your convenience.




So, my main changes were adding ganache and buttercream to the center layers. The ganache was still a little warm. That should have been the first sign.

So, dark chocolate and orange zest--specifically, blood orange zest and orange extract--were the additions to my version of the cake. It was very fun to watch the cakes come together (and oh, how wonderful they smelled!). The frosting scared me--it really did look like cottage cheese for a long while before it came together. The end result was a really tasty cake, though I will admit it was too rich for a single dweller's kitchen. I was scared not to refrigerate it for fear that it would go bad quickly, and I think that's what did it in at the end.




This was my first four-layer cake, and everyone's got to have some falls before they accomplish something profound, right?

Lots of people have the recipe up. Rosa's Yummy Yums is the first I found.

Thanks for the challenge!