baking a cake

On Friday it was my friend M's birthday. She invited John and I over for dinner and planned to have some of her other friends over as well. They ended up having other plans like travelling in the U.S. and around the world. Pesky travelling.

M made a traditional South African dish, babuti, for dinner. It is similar to meatloaf but is flavored with curry and has raisins in it. It is also served with sliced bananas and cocunut. Now, coconut, banana, and ground beef may not sound good together but it was really good. I had a very small serving at fist since I have only had beef a few times since 1992! However, it was really good and had a mild flavor. I was surprised but I liked it. It had good texture and flavor. I ate my whole serving.

For dessert, I made M a lemon layer cake. While home for Christmas, I had gotten her a cookbook and measuring cups/spoons to give her for her birthday. The cake recipe was in this cookbook so I made a copy of it on Friday so I didn't mess up her cookbook. On Saturday, I looked at the recipe and sent John to the store for everything I needed to make the cake. I started looking at the recipe and my cake pans. The cake was supposed to be three layers but I didn't have the correct sized pans. I had one 9-inch pan so at John's suggestion, I put as much water into the pan as I would cake batter and then poured it into the other two pans I had to see if they all had roughly the same volume. They did so I greased and floured them.

I mixed all the ingredients together and stated to pour the cake batter into the first pan. After filling it about half full, I realized that there wasn't enough batter for three layers so I poured the rest of the batter into the second pan. I then put the two round layer pans into the oven. I can only bake on the very bottom of the oven so the pans had to fit on the same rack or they would have to bake one at a time. Since I didn't have time to bake the cakes separately, I poured the batter into my new mini bundt pan that I got for Christmas. This pan has to be set onto a baking sheet when it is in the oven because it is silicone. So, I got out a baking sheet, slid it under the first pan, trying to make the cake as even as possible and then slid the small bundt cake pan onto the tray also.

15 minutes later, it was time to rotate the cakes. My oven is crap. It is a fan oven which means it blows lots of air and has different settings that I still haven't figured out because the labels of all the dials have worn off. So, I have vaguely figured out which setting to use to bake things on the bottom rack. However, I have to rotate anything that I bake around in the oven because it still heats unevenly. If I leave anything in one place, half of the food will be burned and the other half uncooked! So anyway, after 15 minutes I do the first rotate and check the cake because my oven also sometimes bakes/cooks things really fast.

As I open the door, I realize that the handle is pulling away from the oven door. This is bad. I opened the door carefully, rotated the cakes, and put them back in the oven. I then do the same thing 15 minutes later. The oven door appears more loose and the front plate of glass seems hotter than usual. I send a text to my landlord letting her know that the oven door is breaking.

My friend M calls me to give me the details about the evening. While we are talking and I tell her I am baking her cake, the fire alarm starts to go off for no apparent reason. There is not smoke in the apartment but this is the most sensitive smoke alarm I have ever encountered. So we got off the phone, I took care of the alarm and turn the fan above the stove on high speed to suck up the imaginary smoke.

Then the timer went off and the cakes were done. I take one out of the oven just fine. The other wasn't done yet so I put it back in the oven and let it bake. The cake was done a few minutes later and when I opened the door, the front glass oven door came out from the handle and touched my knee! I managed to get the cake out and keep the oven door from falling out all the way. Unfortantely, John was at the store looking for powdered sugar so he couldn't help me. A couple minutes later my landlord called and I tried to explain what was wrong.

The repair people are supposed to call me to set up an appointment. I haven't heard from them yet...

But back to the cake. I let it cool and made the frosting. I then tried to frost it. This was difficult because I put a lot of lemon filling between the two layers. Anyway, after effort, I got the cake frosted and it tasted excellent! It was one of my better cakes.