My birthday cake, or: how I failed at baking
Well. In a few days, I'll be 26. Just the thought of that is enough to send shivers down my dilapidated geriatic old spine. How depressing: so much not yet achieved, so much left to do, only four more years till I'm 30, and two more years in which I can apply for the two-year European working visa and get back to France and expand my universe. Must work... must save money... must do more with my life...
But meanwhile, in the few brief flashes of hope that occur between the cycles of impending doom and hopelessness, I have been considering my birthday cake.
Nothing against anyone here, but I am going to have to make my own cake this year. No one has time to make me one, and I'm not having a party so there's not really anyone to eat it, or indeed any reason to have a cake at all. After all, I'm not three: I won't have a tantrum if I don't have a fluffy meringue cake with pink cachous all over it. I don't NEED a birthday cake.
But then again, it's my birthday and if I want a cake, I'm a grownup now and I can bloody-well have one. More than that, I can have the EXACT cake I want: the kind of cake I never make for anyone else because no one shares my cakeal tastes. So I'm going to make one.
I think I want a orange and almond cake, and I want to serve it with caramelised orange segments in a syrup with vanilla beans. As previously discussed, I LOVE citrus... and it's citrus season these days and so it's the perfect choice for my autumn birthday. I could have a slice of the cake with some strong Earl Grey tea. Divine...
Now to search for a recipe.
*** a week later***
Found it, made it, wrecked it. Claudia Roden's orange and almond cake. Flourless and butterless. I totally mucked it up.
But meanwhile, in the few brief flashes of hope that occur between the cycles of impending doom and hopelessness, I have been considering my birthday cake.
Nothing against anyone here, but I am going to have to make my own cake this year. No one has time to make me one, and I'm not having a party so there's not really anyone to eat it, or indeed any reason to have a cake at all. After all, I'm not three: I won't have a tantrum if I don't have a fluffy meringue cake with pink cachous all over it. I don't NEED a birthday cake.
But then again, it's my birthday and if I want a cake, I'm a grownup now and I can bloody-well have one. More than that, I can have the EXACT cake I want: the kind of cake I never make for anyone else because no one shares my cakeal tastes. So I'm going to make one.
I think I want a orange and almond cake, and I want to serve it with caramelised orange segments in a syrup with vanilla beans. As previously discussed, I LOVE citrus... and it's citrus season these days and so it's the perfect choice for my autumn birthday. I could have a slice of the cake with some strong Earl Grey tea. Divine...
Now to search for a recipe.
*** a week later***
Found it, made it, wrecked it. Claudia Roden's orange and almond cake. Flourless and butterless. I totally mucked it up.
The actual mixing was OK: whip egg whites and fold with pureed whole boiled oranges, almond meal and sugar, but it was the TIN that betrayed us all... It was supposed to be baked in a 23cm tin. I only had a 20cm tin, so piled it in, hoped for the best... but there was too much mixture in there. It wouldn't cook all the way through, and when I removed it from the oven it collapsed from the effort of holding its breath, puffing up its golden chest.... so. I will one day try again with this cake, but for now feast your eyes on its pathetically fallen glory:
Lucky someone made me another cake.
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