The Tale of the Oozing and Slightly Lop-sided Birthday Cake

Last Wednesday (28th May) was my birthday.

Ta-dah! Another year older and definitely not any wiser.

I didn’t make a big thing out of it, because, well, I am pretty pathetic when it comes to blowing my own trumpet, or things of a similar ilk.

Anyway, I planned to make a birthday cake, which I would then share with you. However, it didn’t exactly go as planned.

I had made a chocolate cake for someone a couple of weeks ago and ever since I made it, I’ve had it on my mind. So I knew this was the cake that I was going to make for myself.

It all appeared to be going quite well until the time came for it to be assembled. There was some left-over caramel sauce in the fridge that I wanted to use up and what better thing to have in the middle of a chocolate cake than a layer of ooey gooey caramel.

Because the caramel sauce was quite soft, I knew I was going to have to use the chocolate frosting to create a dam in which to contain it.

Can you see where things started to go pear-shaped? Yep, there on the right. My chocolate dam was not big enough and the caramel sauce was making a break for freedom. I quickly scooped it back up and tried to mix it in with the frosting a little, in the hopes that would contain it enough.

At this moment in time it looked as if my plan had worked. As you can see there are no puddles of caramel sauce. So I started to spread the frosting down the sides.

Hello, what’s this?

Uh-oh. The caramel sauce is escaping. I quickly scooped it up and tried my best to squidge it back into the cake before spreading a thick layer of frosting over the exit site. This is thick chocolate frosting, it will hold it no problem and no one will be any the wiser (apologies for the slightly out of focus photo).

I continued covering the cake with the frosting and then took the Crunchie bar that I had battered to bits with a rolling-pin (and was also slightly more out of date than I had thought. It had been in my emergency chocolate ration box under my bed for a while. What? Like you don’t have an emergency chocolate store under your bed, which is cunningly disguised as a Clarins box so no one will suspect. Please. You all do. It’s a good place for me to keep chocolate because I tend to forget about it. Hence why the Crunchie was maybe almost a year past its best. It’s chocolate, it keeps forever) and scattered it over the top.

Looking good so far.

Hang on . . . what’s that?

NO! The caramel sauce has broken through! There is no way I can do anything about that. It will just have to ooze. Also, can you see that the cake is not completely straight? That it not because of an uneven layer of frosting, it’s because the cake is leaning because the top layer of sponge is slipping on the caramel sauce. Why didn’t I put it in the fridge to firm up? Why did I think putting the sauce in the cake was a good idea? Why hadn’t I fixed the chocolate dam properly instead of doing an apparently insufficient quick fix?

Oh well, there is always the other side.

Oop, nope, that side is worse.

I left it for a bit as I didn’t want to cut it until we were ready to eat it. Every time I went into the dining room I held my left hand up to my face because I didn’t want to see if it had slipped completely and was now a mangled mess on my already covered in greasy marks (and some squashed mushroom from a chopping board incident) photography surface. I need to invest in some things I can take photos on and wipe down. Paper and mounting board are no longer working for me.

However . . .

Fortunately it didn’t completely collapse.

It did spring another caramel leak not too far from the site of the first one, but it stayed in one piece, which was all that mattered.

I had messed around with the flours a little bit, and although the result was perfectly acceptable, I wasn’t quite happy enough with it to share the recipe with you. Not yet anyway.

So instead I have regaled you with the story of the cake that oozed and slipped. And made me a little bit scared.

But at least I know now that this particular caramel sauce it not suitable for the inside of cake. On cake, yes. In cake, no.

Happy Birthday to me!

PS – if you would like to give me a belated birthday present, please vote for me in the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards. All you have to do is click on the associated picture over there on the right, in the sidebar, go to the second page and fill in the details. Thanking you so very much!