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  • The Chopping Blog

Don't Waste a Cake Mistake

Karen D
Posted by Karen D on May 26, 2017

 

I don’t know about you, but I always seem to have some sort of cake frozen in my freezer. It works wonders for those times when I want to put something together, but don’t have the time for the whole “bake-cool (completely!)-ice-decorate” process. Frozen cake lets me skip right to the icing and decorating bit - I love that!

But as luck would have it, for Easter I wanted to bake a very specific layer cake for my guests, and I had none in my freezer. Plus, I had these great new cake pans I wanted to try! So, I prepared the batter and put the cake in the oven… all of a sudden I could smell the cake all through the house, a good sign that it should have come out earlier. When I pulled the pans from the oven and released the cakes, they were far too done on the outside.

cake edgesI would have had to cut way too much off to make these presentable under the pink strawberry buttercream I made. Lesson learned: Never try brand new pans with a new recipe for the first time for company! As my poor layers cooled, I quickly prepared some more batter, and then watched them like a hawk while they were baking – success all around this time. 

The good news is that once those original layers cooled, I checked out the inside. The cake looked and tasted delicious, with the nice, dense crumb I was hoping for! So, I froze my delicious-but-not-so-pretty “cake mistake.”

cake inside

Fast forward a month later, and it's this cutie-pie’s second birthday.

karens daughter

Since I was going to be working on Ava’s big day, I wanted to be sure she knew that Auntie Karen was thinking of her. I remembered I had that “cake mistake” in the freezer - and for a little girl, maybe I could make a “little cake”!  So I grabbed my 4-inch round cutter (I could just as easily have used a glass to cut through the cake) and cut out two small rounds for two layers.

cake cutter

Now the edges were nice and clean, ready for some vanilla buttercream! I rounded up some sprinkles to finish it off. We both loved the result!

Ava's cakeAva

All this thanks to not throwing away my cake mistake! And yes, I also saved the leftover scraps in my “scrap cake bag”. Trust me, those are good with just about anything – but I’ll save that for another time.

If you love baking, or think you might and want to start learning, The Chopping Block has some wonderful hands-on baking classes in June to check out, Summer Pie & Tart Boot Camp.




Topics: cakes, birthday cake, baking, cake

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