The Modern Day Julie/Julia Project- Cake Catastrophe!

Hey there! Welcome back to ‘The Confessions of a Random Blogger!’

Julia Child once famously said, “A party without cake is just a meeting.” However, at a time when neither a party or meeting of any kind is impossible without the assistance of monotonous virtual web conferences, I wanted to see if cake could make them any better.

I started this series as a way to teach myself how to cook. As a broke (broken from trying to get an internship) college student, knowing how to cook, at least a few basic things; can literally be the difference between life and death.

You know…starvation?

Morbidities aside, today’s post is a collaboration with ‘The Oven and Me;’ my best friend and my unofficial designated culinary professor.

She’s going to be teaching me how to bake a chocolate cake, but there’s a catch. We are going to be doing this completely online, as there are still lockdowns in our city.

Let’s see if cake, or at least an attempt at cake can turn this virtual meeting into a party!

So as for the actual baking process and steps, you can check out her post here!

Wired Workplace

So the first issue arose when we realised that both of our batteries and internet connections (mostly mine) weren’t stable enough for us to get through a three hour virtual cooking lesson.

Therefore, the first step of the process was equipping my kitchen with enough wires and chargers to make a NASA control room jealous.

I’m sure they wouldn’t be jealous of the hundreds of near death experiences from tripping over them every couple of seconds.

Apparatus Absence

The next problem was the fact that I didn’t have…I guess the ‘apparatus’ would be the right word? While The Oven and Me kept telling me to use my measuring teaspoon to measure quantities of baking soda, I used standard mixing teaspoons- apparently there’s a difference?

An evidently hilarious difference since she couldn’t stop laughing at the fact that I didn’t know the difference between baking soda and baking powder- once again, apparently there’s a difference?

Now comes the most painful part.

My household isn’t particularly known for its baking prowess, and therefore, we only have one cake pan. What I didn’t know was that it wasn’t necessarily in the best condition. After pouring in my baking mixture, I realised that my kitchen counter wasn’t in fact made of chocolate, and that my cake mixture was leaking through the baking pan.

While I contemplated simply throwing the pan into the oven with copious amounts of either tape or glue, my mom came to the rescue with a mostly intact pan.

Culinary Chocolate Surgery

The whole baking process actually went pretty smoothly! However, this wouldn’t be one of my blog posts if something didn’t go wrong.

The cake refused to leave the pan. Like I was literally unable to remove the cake for some reason. Luckily, my dad probably knew that I would mess something up, and was prepared to perform culinary surgery on my cake.

After around 20 minutes of carefully trying to slide it out of the damn cake pan, it was finally ready to be eaten!

Please excuse the terrible photography- it’s not my thing! The Oven and Me gave me some good but less than suitable advice of waiting until the morning to take pictures. However, cake simply cannot survive for more than 20 minutes in my house.

My cake was unfortunately not around to see the sunrise.

The Oven and Me is a Liar

Rant time. So at the very beginning of the baking process, The Oven and Me told me to make a cup of black coffee, as the cake is supposed to be a chocolate mocha cake of sorts.

So I made it!

I then kept it aside, waiting for her to tell me when to add it.

However, she never told me when or where to add it.

So when my cake was in the oven, and I saw that the coffee was still unused, I asked her what I was supposed to do with it.

Now, she claims that she told me to add it to the cake batter- she said no such thing. Meanwhile she’s probably calling me a liar in her post too!

Comment below who you think is the liar!

My cake tasted absolutely amazing and I just ended up drinking the coffee; so it’s a win-win situation.

But it’s a matter of principle. She never told me to add the coffee.

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Thank you for reading! Comment some recommendations of what you would like to see me cook next!

For all the foodies out there, check out her post here!

You can check out my last few posts here:

• The Scariest Things That Actually Exist
• borrowed poems from an anonymous- ‘Expressions of Love’ and ‘Experience’
• The Horror of Surveillance
• Pet Peeves
• Happy Panda- Random Blogger Interviews

Until Next Time.