Friday Routines - 5/8- Experiments are NOT my Forte!

Let me explain why there have been so few posts this week.  Well...I have been experimenting again and clearly it hasn’t gone very well!  I am chocking this weeks experiments right up there with the time I thought I would become the premier home smoker with my very cool (but useless now in my opinion) home smoker.  That was one of those things that sounded like a good idea at the time.  Well, now it’s sitting on my pantry floor gathering dust.

This week of disasters all started last Saturday when Terri and Mic decided to play cupid for a mutual friend (no this isn’t one times when you say friend but you really mean yourself...although...hmmm...food for thought...pun intenedd) and I offered to bring dessert (I did bring that yummy lentil dish...so it wasn’t ALL bad)

 Anyhew....I decided to get all southern and make a pineapple upside down cake (Tyler made it look SO easy) then I decided to get all clever and do the same thing with peaches...AB SO LUTE (insert bad word ending in “ing” ...I know what my choice would be...) DISASTER. 

Looked awful tasted wonderful

I threw the first batch of batter out since I forgot about the old cook book phrase “batter will resemble cottage cheese.” UGH...then I started running out of sugar, flour, and eggs which are kind of important when you want to BAKE!  One cake fell in the middle, the other overflowed in the oven.  And finally one was just crap.  Now that was all on Saturday afternoon. 

Did I let the above stop me?  No...I went back for more eggs, flour, butter, oven cleaner and punishment.  The damn cake tasted wonderful but looked like something from a dogs dish!

My elusive goal is to make a delicious vanilla Genoise cake with a caramel top...I don’t want to pour  the caramel over (although I did resort to that in one experiment)

Caramel over the top and over the top!

I want the caramel in the bottom of the pan and absorb into the cake as it bakes...kind of like a Cake Caramel...In fact...when I figure this sucker out...that’s what I’ll call it.  As I’m writing this, I just pulled another disaster out...explosion over flow in the oven (good thing I picked up that oven cleaner) but I can see I’m getting closer...boy...when I get this it’s going to be good. 

Taste was perfect, texture perfect, caramel just right but the cake sunk in the middle...

I did figure out what I did wrong today...I an effort to save time (haste makes waste) I doubled a recipe that obviously should not be doubled (too much baking powder = sunken middle)...my bad!

I’m going to get right back on that cake horse tomorrow and bring my perfect Vanilla Cake Caramel over to David H’s dinner party!