Saturday, August 18, 2007

Is it ready yet?

Flipping through the March '07 issue of Cooking Light I saw what looked like one of the most delicious cakes: Italian Cream Cake. It just looked like this wonderfully moist two layer cake full of chopped pecans and covered in cream cheese icing. Now I normally don't like pecans, but I had to try this cake. Plus it got a four out of five star rating by reviewers on the website, so I figured it must be pretty good. So I beat my egg whites, folded in my sifted cake flour, and toasted my teeny chopped pecans. I imagined it to be a moist, cakey version of an angel food cake with pecans...This cake should been moist, the reviewers said it would be, but mine wasn't. But that was probably my fault. See, I checked the cake when at the appropriate time, but it just didn't seem done. So I left it in there. Every minute or so I would check it, and it just didn't seem done. Finally after about 10 minutes I gave up and took it out. By then I could tell it was overdone.

After it cooled I frosted it with the homemade cream cheese frosting. I should have taken the advice of the reviewers and used another cream cheese frosting, but I am stubborn and must go by the book the first time. The icing tasted alright, very cream cheesy and sugary, but it lacked something. It was also very thick and there just wasn't enough of it. I was able to cover the entire cake, but I really had to skimp on the inside between the two layers.
All in all the cake was good. But then again, not many cakes are bad in my opinion. I would probably make this again, but do 1 1/2 times the amount of icing (or use another frosting recipe) and pull the cake out of the oven even if I don't think it is ready...

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