The Cake of Disappointment...

I apologise for the sporadicity of my blogging lately.  I used to be hugely regular, but since I started a job where I frequently work weekends, I have found myself with less oomph on the bloggage front.  And, I suppose, there are only so many pictures of my dogs and cats that I can put up to entertain you with...

So, anyway.  On Tuesday, my book 'Can't Buy Me Love' came out in paperback!

You can buy it  at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1781893535

And I duly celebrated by baking the world's worst cake,  I know, I know!  I should have just gone out and bought myself a fabulous cake from a proper shop, preferably one with 'Congratulations' on it in fat icing (I love icing).  I debated buying fourteen cupcakes and icing a letter on each one, so that I could eat them in a 'GIVE ME A C!  GIVE ME AN O!' flamboyant sort of a way.  But I didn't (mainly because I took the dogs on an 8 mile walk and was too lazy to go out to the shops afterwards. Honestly, my feet hurt).  And I'm generally quite good at cakes and I had a big thing of ready made icing in the cupboard that needed using up so... anyway.  I made a cake.

Well.  Quite clearly I have offended the Gods of Baked Goods.  Because that cake was the worst cake I have ever made (and I once mistook wholemeal bread flour for ordinary self raising and made a cake you could have laid as a foundation stone).

It looked all right when it came out of the oven, all puffy and spongey and like it was supposed to. So I left it to cool, whereupon it listed sharply to starboard and sank sideways.  It looked less like a book celebration cake and more like a Titanic memorial sponge. But there's no such thing as bad cake, right?  So I cut it in half (revealing its patchily soggy middle) and filled it with jam and buttercream, spread icing on the top and prepared for a feast.

No.

It tasted like it looked.  A slightly-sweetened brick, with overtones of raw egg.

I hold that there are few disappointments quite as...well...disappointing, as food disappointment.  You know, when the icing from your bun sticks to the paper bag, or your eclair topping melts, or that yummy jam that you thought was apricot and spread all over the middle of your victoria sponge turns out to be marmalade?  It was like all that.

It wasn't so bad when it was fresh, but after two days, when the icing went hard, it was almost inedible.  But only almost.  I mean, it was a celebration cake - I had to eat it!

Next time it's straight to the Co Op...