Baking fail?

...at this point we just don't know.

The book club man came around at work today and, as I often do, I picked up the obligatory cookbook in his latest offerings.  And being something of a Cadbury whore, I was very happy that it was a Cadbury's chocolate cookbook.  I had a quick leaf through it in the staff room earlier in the week - there was nothing in it that particularly stood out, but for only £3 I figured it was worth picking up and looking at closer.  So this evening, about midway through Masterchef Australia, I decided I really wanted to bake something nice but simple tonight to take into work and share with my minions tomorrow.

I had a good read through and I found a nice simple Chocolate Mousse cake, which I already had all of the ingredients for except for 200g of dark chocolate, so I swiftly scooted up the road to pick that up, and then came back home and got to work.

Now this was a very new experience for me - baking a cake without any flour.  Might sound strange, but all it contained was chocolate, butter, eggs, sugar, and some orange liquor.  According to the recipe it was supposed to rise during baking, then sink during cooling, and then once cooled it should have a texture similar to that of chocolate mousse (but with all the added bonus of being a cake).  The downside to this recipe was that there was no photo accompanying it, leaving me with no idea as to how well I'd managed to make mine.

Anyways, I ploughed on undeterred, and about an hour and a half later I took my finished cake out of the oven and it looked beautiful... which was quite a pity because I knew that it was going to be collapsing in on itself imminently.  About 20 minutes later I came back to a sorry-looking cake, which was just about cool enough to take out of the cake tin and transfer to a plate.  So now I'm just left waiting until morning for it to have cooled completely so that I can try slicing it and see what the consistancy's like :) I'm quite nervous, but I'm looking forward to giving it a try.  Unfortunately it still looks rather pathetic, so I wont be taking it in to share with the folks at work.  But anyways, yeah, I'm now just left counting down the hours and waiting to see if I've made an epic baking fail, or if I've managed to make an ugly looking cake with a soft and yummy heart ;-p

Final cake result!

So here we go, as promised, the photo result of my immense baking session today! Started just after 10:00am, finished about 5:30pm, and producing roughly 85 cupcakes.

So we have Vanilla & Bitter Chocolate (blue cases), Blackberry Cornmeal (pink cases), Cornmeal Rumcakes (white cases), and Triple Citrus Cupcakes (Green/Yellow cases).  Having tried the citrus ones I've decided not to bother with the icing.  They taste nice enough on their own, and adding icing will make them a tremendous mess when I have to stack and transport them tomorrow.  I like the Blackberry ones as well, the Vanilla/Bitter choc ones are passable, and the Rum ones were a bit of a letdown, but all in all I'm happy with the selection I'm taking in tomorrow.  And if there's any left when I finish at 5:00 then they'll be coming home with me ;) lol

Also, I've bought two extras...

I've got one workmate who's very keen on Carrot Cake, and I didn't fancy making one on top of everything else I had to bake today, so I picked up an Asda Extra Special one, which I've had in the past and I know it tastes good.  Then on the way out of Asda I spotted their Hallowe'en cake range, and in the Death By Chocolate cake :) It's your typical mega-chocolatey cake, but the topping is decorated with icing gravestones and a hand bursting its way out of the ground.  Now anyone who knows me knows that chocolate and zombies are two of my favourite things, and now they have been brought together through the wonderful medium of cake.  I've tried everything I've baked today, and I've had the carrot cake in the past, so I'm determined to get a slice of this tomorrow, seeing as it's something new to try.

So there we go, my cake adventure is finished!  Tune in tomorrow and hopefully I'll have had some good feedback from my fellow labrats :)