Now look at this.
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| What is this I don't even |
LOOK AT IT.
This... this... thing is everything a cake shouldn't be. It's heavy, it's got the texture of wallpaper paste and it's so sweet it gives you cavities by just smelling it.
This is- or was intended to be- a honey cake.
Now I've made honey cake many, many times before, always using the same recipe I've adapted from numerous cook books. A simple, light, fluffy and subtly but distinctively honeyed confection with floral undertones and a hint of citrus, baked in a loaf tin and eaten plain with a cup of tea.
This time, however, I decided to be different, and try someone else's recipe.
My first, and possibly most key mistake out of seven mistakes, was to use an American one.
Honey is sweet, right? So you'd think it'd register in my mind that it was a little off that this recipe I found from the internet (possibly the second mistake) called for a cup of honey, a cup and a half of white sugar, and another cup of brown sugar. Actually yes, it did register- but the reviews had nothing but good things to say about the flavour of this cake, and I've been trying to get out of the habit of second-guessing and altering any recipe I come across- so I decided to roll with it.
My third mistake then, was to not listen to my gut instincts, and just alter the damned recipe.
My fourth mistake was to follow the additional advice at the end of the recipe and make it into a frosted layer cake. It told me to make a cream cheese frosting, because the tanginess of the cheese would allegedly create a foil for the sweetness of the cake. This made sense, I thought, because the Russian honey layer cake medovik does use a sour cream filling. So I made their cream cheese frosting.
My fifth mistake was seeing all of that icing sugar going into the frosting, and frosting the cake with it instead of sticking it straight where it belonged: in the bin.
Now back to the cake itself: when it came out of the oven (after I had tested it with the prodding test and poking test as usual), it was springy and smelled great. I tested a little bit that was sticking out- it seemed okay. I only realised things were starting to go terribly wrong when the cake had cooled and the springiness that it had when it was fresh out of the oven had disappeared. Then I cut it into layers.
Mistake number six: seeing the glue-like insides and not putting it all in the same place I should have put the cream cheese frosting. Instead, bravely optimistic, I put the whole lot together, sliced it, and tried it.
My god, it was the most awful thing I've ever tasted that has ever come out of my oven. As I had feared, it was tooth-achingly sweet and its glue-like texture turned to cement in the stomach. Disgusted, particularly with the frosting, I picked the layers apart and scraped the horrible stuff, at long last chucking it away. Would that make it any better? The cake was still like glue, despite it having come out of the oven apparently perfectly baked. I didn't want to waste it- what on Earth could I do?
My final mistake:I put it in the microwave, in the mad hope it would make it fluffy like a steamed pudding. It didn't. It just sort of... melted.
The wretched thing is still sitting on the counter in the kitchen, although I have admitted defeat now. I don't want to throw it away, but I just cannot think of anything to do with this foul creation. I've been considering the various way you could murder someone with it, since it's so heavy- drop it from a high building, put it in a bag and beat someone with it, blend it into a smoothie and force feed someone the whole lot... but I've definitely learned to listen to the instinct I've gained from years of baking experience.
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