Second Cake Try Ends with Smoke, Dripping Dollops

By LIANNE WILKENS

I am already disgusted with myself as I slide the cake into the oven. I haven’t had such difficulty baking a cake since the 6th grade, when my first solo cake broke coming out of the pan and I covered the whole thing with mini marshmallows to make it look decent.

Today’s cake is a gift for a sick friend. I pulled out my tried and true chocolate poundcake recipe, a surefire hit that is delicious and freezes well. I collected my ingredients, dug out my ancient tube pan – I mean really ancient, it was my mom’s, I used it as a teenager and appropriated it when I got married 24 years ago – measured the cocoa and separated the eggs. Oh, the batter was delicious.

But apparently the thermometer on my oven is off, because on minute 45 of the 70-minute recipe my husband called upstairs, “This cake is smelling pretty done.” I trotted downstairs, though it was way early, and was horrified to smell, yes, a pretty done chocolate poundcake. Seriously? Dang it. And since the situation wasn’t already bad enough, I accidentally dropped the whole thing as I went to remove the cooled cake from the pan. I was very relieved when it came out looking OK despite the crash-landing.

Until this morning, when, after worrying about it all night, I decided I was just going to have to try the cake. I could give it to my friend in individually wrapped slices, and one missing slice wouldn’t be noticed, but I couldn’t give it to her if it was overbaked. So, “Hey, you want to do me a favor?” My 17-year-old son was happy to help. I cut him a slab, and a thin piece for myself, and … “Yeah,” he said, two bites in, confirming my own conclusion. “This is too dry.”

So, dang it, I’m making another cake. I can’t believe it, I overbaked a cake! It’s been … decades! I shook my head, made a mental note to pick up an oven thermometer – and, until I get one, bake everything at, oh, 20 degrees lower – and pulled out the eggs and flour and sugar and cocoa and vanilla. Again.

I barely needed to look at the recipe the second time around. I had just made it! I creamed the butter and brown sugar, added the separated eggs, measured out the vanilla … and was just getting ready to pour it into the greased tube pan when I happened to lick my fingers. Ugh! What? I took another taste, looked at the recipe. Oh! I added the brown sugar, but not the granulated sugar! Whew, I caught that in the nick of time! I almost ruined the cake – again! Unbelievable! Hastily I added the sugar, poured the batter into the pan, and slid the pan into the oven.

And I felt good.

Until now, a mere five minutes later. When I hear a sizzle. And smell smoke. I flip on the oven light, and … no way. No, no way. Batter is leaking from the pan, dropping and burning in big dollops on the hot oven floor. Shoot! Dropping the tube pan must have dented the bottom, and now the inner piece and the outer piece are gapping. What can I do about this now? Shoot shoot shoot.

I grab oven mitts and my big long barbecue spatula. I open the oven door and lean in, scrape the batter off the bottom. One, two, three, four long reaches, my arm tingling from the heat, to scrape the burning blobs off the oven floor and – whack! – dump it into the sink. Finally I pull out a cookie sheet, long and wide, and slide it beneath the pan to catch the dripping batter.

The baking cake will solidify soon, I think, and I’ll lose some, but it’ll still be OK, I console myself. This second cake will still be fine. It’ll just be a little smaller. No one will notice.

But the batter … it doesn’t solidify quickly. It keeps oozing, dropping and mounding on the cookie sheet. Glumly I watch it drip and drip and drip.

A half-hour later, the cake smells done. Already. I shake my head, pull it out. The cake is maybe half the height of its overbaked predecessor, with the right side lower than the left. The cookie sheet underneath has a big heap of semi-burned cake, baked droppings from the pan above. And I got most of it out, but still – cough, cough! – there’s a good amount of smoke lingering in the kitchen.

Stupid darned annoying ridiculous cake, I think as I plop the pan onto the cooling rack. Tried and true surefire recipe my foot! Hey, maybe if I cover it with mini marshmallows ….