How I made a nana cake and almost burned down the house…

So this is it.

The infamous cake that caused me to set my kitchen on fire.

It is – by the way – the very same infamous cake I had promised to tell you about before but never got around to do so, because when I tried to make it the first time everything just went horribly wrong (and yet the cake had been eaten before I was able to take a picture – because if I had taken a pic, I still would have been able to tell you about the disaster at least.)

Anyway, disaster is the key word when speaking of this cake.

I have strictly followed the recipe, though.

The recipe is from my nana’s favourite cook book, one of her most treasured posessions (not the nana with the hand-written recipes, this time it’s the other one who passed away when I was very little, but I still remember her delicious cakes!)

I mixed 250 g butter, 250 g sugar, 1 sachet vanilla sugar/a few drops of vanilla essence, 2 eggs, 4 egg yolks and 2 tablespoons rum.

I added 150 g plain flour, 100 g corn flour and 3 teaspoons baking powder.

I beat 4 egg whites until stiff and folded them in.

When I had all of this done, there was no fire in sight.

Everything was fine, so I continued.

I greased a loaf pan and lined it with greased baking parchment (again – everything according to the instructions in the recipe book).

I put two tablespoons of the dough into the pan, put it in the oven and turned on the grill.

According to the recipe, you’re supposed to bake the cake under the grill for about two minutes, then spread over another layer of dough, bake it again for another two minutes and so on until all the dough is gone.

So after two minutes, I took the cake out of the oven and although the baking parchment was slightly darker than usual, the cake looked fine:

So I put two more spoons of dough into the pan, put everything back into the oven – and at some stage between that moment and 120 seconds later, the baking parchment must have caught fire, because when I opened the oven two minutes later, my cake was ablaze.

Although my cake was on fire, I was one lucky girl for two reasons:

a) After the baking parchment was burned down and all was left was ashes, the fire burned out so that I could grab the pan, throw it into the sink and distinguish each and every possible remaining trouble spot with water.

b) The cake caught fire at the beginning. This means, I had a lot of dough left over, so I quickly greased another loaf pan and continued making my cake.

Except, this time, I didn’t act according to the recipe.

I just didn’t want to use baking parchment again.

I cut the cake in smaller pieces and covered them with chocolate icing. Also according to recipe, by the way.

Ironically, the first thing that came to my mind was “I’m On Fire” by Bruce Springsteen – and then I spent the whole day thinking of other songs relating to fire in one way or another… 

“The Fire Inside” by Bon Jovi

“Light My Fire” by The Doors

“Smoke On The Water” by Deep Purple

“Fight Fire With Fire” by Kansas

“Wheel In The Sky” by Journey

“Ring Of Fire” by Johnny Cash

“We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Billy Joel

“London’s Burning” by The Clash 

“Hearts On Fire” by Bryan Adams

Promise!

I hate to break promises.

I promised a few things lately and I think it’s about time to acquit myself to some of them.

So first of all I would like to share with you some pictures of my short trip to Austria.

My parents had dropped my nana off at a friend’s house and it was my job to pick her up and drive her home.

Wasn’t as easy as it sounds because my grandma is quite a complicated person. (She asked strangers to check on the tyres because she didn’t trust me when I told her on Thursday the car had just been to the garage on Wednesday).

Anyway – it was a stressful, but nice trip and here are some more pics:

There was a special visitor outside the kitchen window:

In other news: the facebook page has now been established so if you have an account, please feel free to show your appreciation of coffeerocketfairytale here. (If you don’t have an account, it might be an idea to join 😉 Here’s a “how to” ).

And finally the cake.

Now… how do I say this…

It has been… kind of… unsuccessful. You might just call it Mission: Impossible. Or The Ugly Truth.

Let’s just say I was too lazy to read the oven’s manual and therefore didn’t adjust the settings right.

To cut a long story short: the cake looks sort of okay and tastes sort of okay, but in fact it’s still a bit raw on the inside.

A bit embarrassing really, especially considering that I have been thinking about training as a confectioner/pastry cook. (In fact, I have a job interview this afternoon, so wish me luck!)

So I will have to go back and do it all over again – and then I will be able to tell you exactly how to make a “Schichtkuchen” (a layered cake, a bit like Baumkuchen).

P.S.: Dear Spammers, stop harrassing me for writing “email” and “facebook” in my posts. Go and get a life! (Or write a nice and honest comment – much appreciated!)