So far, so good

I've been busy putting my new gas oven to the baking test. This morning I made a double batch of plain old Betty Crocker white yeast bread that turned out fine. By comparison, my old Viking was like a blast furnace and I was always shifting things around to keep pans from scorching on one side. We're going to have fried onions and hamburgers tonight with those round buns.


Ah, yes-- back to cake. I was discouraged by my coconut cake class experience, and since I'd accidentally left the instructor's recipe handout at the college I had to start from scratch once again. No matter, this month's Saveur magazine came to the rescue with a cake issue. The recipe I tried had 4 eggs, a half pound of butter, etc. etc. Imagine all that food in just one cake. Then add in a 4 yolk pastry cream filling made with whole milk, toasted coconut and a carton of whipped cream for "frosting." But! The result was a dense, not overly sweet yellow cake. Unfortunately, the pastry cream cooked up as thick as scrambled eggs, so back to the drawing board on that part of the recipe.
John said it tasted nothing like a cake mix, which I should take as a compliment (I think) because I've made hundreds of them. Cake mixes, that is. This heavy homemade cake was actually better (moister) the second day.

It would be nice to have a decent company cake recipe (other than cheesecake) in my repertoire, but I'm afraid careful baking is never going to be my thing. My heart is not really in it.

On the other hand, roast chicken anyone?