This cake being so simple with no adornment, I thought it would be the perfect cake for my new Nordic Ware butterfly cakelet. I got it from Marshall's a couple of weeks ago. It looked so cute I couldn't resist buying.
Once the caramel cooled, I mix the dry ingredients, add in the caramel and eggs and mix. So easy.
1/2 recipe would be a 6 inch cake which is 3 3/4 cups. The cakelet pan is 3 cups. I thought I could get away with just using the cakelet pan so I fill up all the cakelets until it's about 3/4 full. 20 minutes in the oven, the cake rose a bit higher than the pan. I thought, no problem, I'll just trim it for the photos.
When I tried to unmold the cake, all of them refused to unmold. I pried and poked with my spatula and shook the pan and one butterfly unmold perfectly. The rest were disastrous looking. They looked like butchered and mangled butterfly - not pretty at all. I was pretty disappointed. The pan is supposedly non stick and I did use baking spray and apply them generously with a brush, going to every nook and cranies. Also, if you noticed from the picture, you see dark spots where the caramel crystalized. Rose said they should dissolve upon baking, and they didn't.
Tasting impressions:
I had some of the broken pieces of the cake when it came out of the oven and I thought it wasn't bad. Nothing special but not bad either. Once the cake cooled, hubby tasted it and here's how the conversation went:
Hubby: hm.. what's in it? what spice?
Me: there's no spice, it's a caramel cake.
Hubby: really? I can taste a spice but don't know what it is.
Me: there's no spice, it's the caramel that you're tasting.
Hubby: ok.
Me: so you don't like it?
Hubby: no.
Me: will you eat it?
Hubby: no, it tastes weird.
There you go folks. He actually deemed it inedible. This has never happened before! I wondered if I did something wrong but I don't think so (and no it's not just me being stubborn here haha). All my ingredients are fresh and I read over the recipe and didn't see any mistake.
As for my tasting impression, the caramel flavor is not very distinctive at all. If no one told me it's caramel I would probably have thought there's a spice in it. It's almost like a nutmeg taste but not quite. Needless to say, this cake will not be on a repeat list :).
Funny how the same cake can have such drastic difference in households. Tom love his.. he could not eat it fast enough (unlike your hubby!).
ReplyDeleteregardless of your mishap with the pan (I would return it!) the butterfly looks great!
I'm so sorry to hear that your husband didn't like the cake. You can return the butterfly pan? We can't return anything that has been used. Mine has a very strong caramel taste..maybe you need to burnt the caramel like me..lol! I agree with Monica, that your butterfly cake looks great!
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh, that is just the cutest thing ever! y husband wasn't so crazy about it either but I ignored him. Noticed he ate a slice or two.
ReplyDeleteThat's funny I have the same pan and I haven't encountered the same problems. Just make sure you grease it really well. I do find that a vanilla butter cake works the best with this and doesn't have that holey texture appearance. I still think your butterflies look really pretty though...such an effective shape.
ReplyDeleteLove the butterfly mold pan but feel terrible the cakes are getting stuck. When I use a spray on those pans, I have the same issue. I use (I know this is bad for us but works for me) shortening and a piece of syran wrap, using my fingers to poke the shortening into all the crevices; then flour the pan. Maybe you can give the pan another shot and see if this works?
ReplyDeleteThe butterfly truly is adorable!
Thank you for the comment on my rice krispie treat twist/candy bar. I never thought about them as little candy bars and wish I had of. I would have cut them differently AND added white chocolate drizzle over the tops.