Soon
after my marriage my in-laws discovered I enjoyed baking.
And
baking meant cakes, right?
Wrong.
For
me, baking meant roasts and au gratin and lamb chops and fish Florentine and moussaka.
However,
my in-laws did not know this. One day when we were visiting them in their house
at Salt Lake, much to my surprise I found that they too had invested in an
oven. It was a small OTG , nothing like the big one they had presented me but
there it was staring at me. My father-in-law had also got a can of pineapples
and was ready to rush out and get me whatever else I may need. I got the hint
all right: a pineapple cake. Or in any case, some baked dessert with pineapple
in it.
Sigh.
Those were the days before the internet, my trusty Betty Crocker Cookbook was still a distant dream and I was a novice at baking cakes. I
searched my head a remembered this pineapple upside down cake my Mom used to
make. I called her and jotted down the recipe, the best she remembered it. And
then I made it.
It
was a disaster. I’m sure there was nothing wrong with the recipe but the whole
thing fell flat, the upside down part was a complete fail and the thing looked
like someone’s bad dream. Later I learnt that heat and humidity turns a cake
flat if let out of the heat too soon. I learnt too many eggs are not always
nice and there is a reason why you are supposed to sift the flour and add the
ingredients one by one. Oh, my in-laws were very sporting about it. They all
helped themselves to the collapsed pudding-like goo and declared it was
wonderful. Only I still cringe at the thought of that upside down cake.
And
no, I have never tried it since.
Maybe
I should!
Here’s
this recipe I found online.Yes, thanks to BettyCrocker! I’m saving it to try another day.
And you? Have you had any memorable baking disasters yet?
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