February 15, 2010

My nemesis: the cake (or maybe even the egg)



I’ve been toying with the idea of talking about foods I’ve made that haven’t turned out so well. Do I only share my culinary triumphs or talk about foods that haven’t worked out, or plain failed? Afterall, I’m sure not even Bobby Flay gets all his dishes perfect the first time he makes it.

I guess my concession will be to not post any recipes that don’t work, but to talk about the dish itself.

I once said that cakes are my culinary nemesis. This is true. I other over beat or under beat the eggs, which makes the texture either too hard (think meringue: those white peaks are made by beating the eggs into submission), or too soft (think egg custard: you want to keep the texture denser and you don’t want it to rise). In this case, I didn’t beat the eggs enough, for fear of overbeating them.

I tried to make coconut pound cake (the cake in the picture is pink because of Chinese New Year). The taste is amazing, but the texture was just weird.
Will I try this recipe again? Most likely. But it might not be for awhile.