So. I attempted this Behemoth Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake. I love Julia’s site (dozenflours.com) because everything always looks good on it and her own invaluable comments makes it easier for me to decide if its a recipe worth trying.
Well. About this behemoth cake, not only was it behemoth in size (and as heavy and daunting as Julia said it would be), it was also a behemoth task to BAKE.
The whole process took me about 6 hours, not including going to Bedok to get supplies. But including the interlude in which I ran out of Vanilla Extract (down to my 3rd bottle in 3 weeks) and had to drop by Cold Storage to buy (where the lil’ old lady at the counter curtly told me it was BYOB day).
One thing I hadn’t realise about the cake is how aesthetically scary it is. Especially when your frosting turns out wrong and starts drooling all over the place, effectively making your cake look more like a monster burger from Carls’ Junior thats dripping sauce and meat in 360 different directions. In fact, given its size and girth, Carls’ Junior would be an understatement.
And I haven’t been able to call it anything ‘The Monster Burger’ because scarred in my mind, thats all it resembles to me. :O
It's Alive!!!!
So yes… This cake was intended for Charmaine’s birthday (Penne had an outing yesterday, more on that later) but it was so totally hideously ugly that I couldn’t bear having to use it.
And, notes on why it turned out so bad:
The entire process was fine UP TILL the frosting. Why? Because Liz decided to try and save money (cheese is not cheap!) by buying cottage cheese instead of cream cheese (so much for that since it turned out cottage cheese was only $.50 cheaper per box!). So instead of creamy, yummy cheese, I had cheese that was dotted with lots of curds. 
Which was basically bad for spreading. And the texture of nutella turned the nutella layers REALLY watery and basically all it did was moosh and squish down the sides of the ‘cake’ to my disgust and horror. The peanut butter layers (given the consistency of good, sticky, creamy peanut butter) were perfectly fine. But basically the frosting ruined any semblance of prettiness that I might have hoped to achieve. Lesson learnt. Use the best ingredients (even if it means you’ll be counting calories till kingdom come) and never try to substitute key ingredients. *nods*
Well the fugliness of the cake made me quite depressed and Weili (whom I was periodically chronicling my baking journey to on MSN) was SO VERY UN-ENCOURAGING about it.
Well its royal ugliness made it clear that there was no way on God’s green earth I was going to put that thing in front of Charmaine for her birthday. So to comfort myself that it probably tasted better than it looked, I cleaned it up and cut a slice for myself.
Spilling Guts.
Okay at least when you can SEE the layers it looks VAGUELY more cake like. Tasted it and because I had been smelling cookie layers and frosting for the WHOLE afternoon, I could barely taste it on my tongue anymore. Nice or not – I also don’t know. So I just decided to bring most of it, sliced up (since it would probably be impossible to slice later on) for the rest of Penne to decide for themselves if it was edible.
The feedback went mostly along the lines of ‘good’, ‘okay’, ‘not bad’ and ‘nice’ so at least that proved it’s edibility. I did bring quite a chunk back (because everyone was too full from dinner and there was another cake AND muffins), which mysteriously disappeared this morning. Either my parents actually ate it up (because it wasn’t in the dustbin so it clearly wasn’t thrown away), brought it to work, or tossed it somewhere I couldn’t see. Hee. But Mom and Dad WERE intrigued by the scary mass in their fridge and actually ventured to try it even before I came home last night. They both said it was not bad but Mom didn’t fail to point out that it was quite ugly.
Would I ever attempt this again? Probably not. The 5 individual cookie layers had to be baked one by one for about 20 mins each. The frosting.. well that was my bad. And after scrutinizing the two examples of the cake I’ve seen on the net (dozenflours and the martha stewards site), I’ve decided that even if it went perfect, it’s still not very pretty (Liz likes pretty things) and unless I find someone madly in love with chocolate chip cookies enough to prefer it over a real cake, I doubt I’ll be wanting to attempt it again.
These was one of those attempts that made me feel like I should never be allowed to bake again. Funnily enough, I seem to have them quite a bit but people still find those end products surprisingly decent, or even, nice. For example my previous Chocolate Chip Meringue Cookies were also really ugly, but I ended up baking it twice and it was well demolished by everyone. My Chocolate Mint Bar tasted really disgusting to my Sis but Jeremy said he liked it. :O So… *shrugs*
We can’t bake ‘keeper’ recipes all the time I guess. The bf was trying to be all encouraging yesterday after I wailed via sms over my failed cake attempt. Although he obviously must subject himself to being my no.1 guinea pig, the truth is that he’s hardly ever around to try them (NS boy!). In fact, funnily enough my chief guinea pigs (apart from Penne – who’ve probably not seen the last of my baking…) are the Arrow Publicity people. Because it just so happens that every time I meet them, its just after one of my baking expeditions and people like Kenn, Jeremy and Sam have taken the greatest brunt of my not-so-little experiments. Thankfully they’ve mostly been quite palatable if not often aesthetically underwhelming. Maybe I should consider taking baking classes… :O
Well I’ve promised the bf some green tea cookies (imho the best thing I’ve baked so far apart from the Quintuple Chocolate Brownies which was ridiculously sweet, and the Lemon Tart just because I loveee soury, tangy flavours) this weekend so I’ve definitely to bake that. (KJ can kope some for your gf if you want.) Also wanted to try a particularly good looking banana/walnut muffin recipe because so far thats the only thing the bf has requested I try. However, the design work I’ve been trying to ignore is starting to pile up. Meep.
Also, the problem with these silly recipes, is the EGGS. Yesterday’s cake called for 2 eggs + 2 yolks. So now I’ve 2 whites sitting in the fridge inching towards the hour where they can no longer be eaten. The Green Tea Cookies calls for 3 yolks. Which means 5 egg whites. Which means in order not to waste them (I’ve been keeping all these parts in the fridge but never using them hence having to throw them away eventually) I’m going to have to bake something WITH egg whites. And what else calls for that many egg whites (that I actually know how to bake) but the Chocolate Chip Meringue Cookies (4 egg whites). And I just don’t want to bake that again because I’m so sick of its taste despite the fact that everyone else seems to like them.
But basically this whole deal about eggs means that I have to keep baking in order to even out my ingredients and not waste precious baby chicken lives that were sacrificed for my baking endeavors.
Bah humbug.
Lol.
Okay I’ve ranted long enough about baking…
Time to talk about PENNE!
We ate a really expensive dinner at House of Sudanese Food @ Suntec. It was quite an amazing sight because the table was SOOOOOOOO long and so many people were there including the seniors and the bill came up to $750. Felt very much like a Chinese wedding dinner for some reason. :O Some of us went to Timbre after that where we didn’t do very much except camwhore A LOT and discuss the next OG outing – BBQ @ East Coast? 
Haha. Oh well. Need to go start designing now…
The days inching towards the start of school are getting more exciting! (Except that there will be no oven to accompany me to hall).
