Whip It Up Week 8: Let Them Eat Cake!

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words…

At this point I  wondered why the hell I hadn’t just made something chocolate.

A few weeks ago I made cupcakes for a baby shower. The icing was homemade, but the cupcakes were from a box. Being a from scratch kind of girl, I wondered why I’d never attempted a plain yellow cake from scratch. When I saw the dessert theme suggestion for week eight, I decide it was on.

I looked through several recipes online and saw that many complaints that homemade cakes turned out dry and tough, so when I came across a recipe that promised a “moist, tender, yellow cake,” I thought, “Score!”

I followed Steffie’s recipe. My only change was substituting whole, regular milk and 2 tsp lemon juice for the buttermilk. Oh, I also used two 9 inch rounds. I’m not sure that this batter would fill two 9×13’s.

This was the first time I’d used these silicone baking pans, though I’d used the muffin pan from the set. I’m not sure how I feel about them. I’ll have to try the same recipe in a spring form or other traditional pan before I make the call.

Despite the pics above, this recipe is a keeper. It was dense and moist. Despite the refined flour and sugar, it tasted wholesome, homemade. It wasn’t the perfect, even consistency of a boxed mix, which I kind of loved, like you might love a hand-knitted sweater. Although it may sound crazy I kept thinking, as I bit into it, “cornbread, but without the corn taste.” It really did remind me of a cakey, sweet cornbread, especially the browned bit on the sides. It wasn’t overly sweet, which I liked. I opted to skip any icing in favor of some homemade strawberry jam. I think it would also be killer as part some type of twinkie inspired concoction.

So…

It was easy, if a little harder than a box mix.

I tasted really good.

I’ll make it again, but I’ll do a little more research on cake making in general first.

I guess that’s it folks…I’m a little sad!