Or, when when your frosting fails and your cake doesn’t rise.
How do you, dear reader, deal with baking failure? Of course if it’s inedible we all throw it out, but what if it’s salvageable? Do you salvage? Do you have backup plans? Do you drop a cute little fondant flower on it and sigh “oh, well”?
We all know baking is a very exact science. I spoon and level my dry ingredients, have a an oven thermometer, I make sure all my ingredients are room temperature, measure all of my ingredients and lay them out around me before hand, never over beat anything and yet still sometimes the frosting just curdles on me and your cake has an identity crisis in the oven and finally realizes that it’s actually a door stop and not a cake.
I always have back up plans, it might be because I’ve been working with technology since my teens and computers can be fickle. My projects were always turned in on a burnt cd, while also having an online backup and carrying it in a zipdrive (this was a while back) in my bag just in case.
This approach spilled over to my life, I usually bake things early enough so that there is time to do over whatever fails, and I’ve been pretty good about stocking my pantry. Sometimes however there’s no way out of the flop and while I try to be non chalant about them, I really can’t. I’d love to know what you guys do.
(Oh, and the cupcake above was one of the Lost cupcakes, that ended up flat.)
Science does conspire against me, too, sometimes
My cupcakes the other day refused to rise, and I have no idea why. Like you, I compulsively measure, prepare, sift, etc., but sometimes, those cakes just don’t want to rise! (However, lucky for me, my recent non-rising cakes still tasted great!)