I was a bit nervous because I've never baked anything on my own before. Sean at the grocery co-op helped me sort out the ingredients and I felt confident in my ability to follow the directions in the cook book.

First red flag was the part about mixing things in a food processor. I don't have one. I didn't let it stop me because I figured that people have been baking for centuries without them. I didn't realize how much my wrist would hurt after stirring and trying to break up all the lumps. After about half an hour of mild anxiety, I tried calling the domestic goddess V-ness & James who baked stuff for Tday but I only got the answering machine.

After some additional attempts to press the clumps witha fork, I finally called my adopted mom, Michelle in Laguna who suggested I add some more soy milk and the batter smoothed up with a little more work.

It looked really pretty going into the oven in the new silicone bake pan I got for Christmas and I was super excited to set the timer. I came back to check on the cake and I noticed some cracks beginning to appear but there was nothing in the book about how to deal with it and I remember James and V-ness discussing them. While I couldn't remember if they mentioned how to remedy or avoid them, I figured it was normal and let it be.

The directions in the book said that oven temperatures vary and since I've never actually baked anything in mine, I didn't know what kind of varience to account for. I stuck a fork in the top of it and let it bake until the fork came out "clean" with no moist batter clinging to it. Overall, the cake baked for twenty minutes longer than the book suggested so maybe it's just lame like that.

German Chocolate Cake

My pal Brian was in town for the Mac World Convention and he took me out to dinner to celebrate my birthday. Heidi, one of the girls I met at Irwin's Cocktail Party worked at the restaurant and as we finished our meal, she brought over a shot she called a "German Chocolate Cake." I never look a gift horse in the mouth and she was so sweet to bring me a gift so I decided to give it a taste. The shot consisted of:

Half glass of Vanilla Flavored Vodka
Half glass of Frangellico (Hazelnut Liquer)
Dressed with either a sugared rim or a lemon rolled in sugar.

It really smelled like a German Chocolate Cake so I didn't really know what to expect when I downed the first half of it - boy did it burn going down! I couldn't taste anything because of the vodka burn but the after-taste really did taste like cake. Irwin tried one the following night made with lime instead of lemon and it smelled a bit off so if I ever make this kind of "cake" I'll use lemon.

I beg to differ with this sign from
our Disneyland trip last October.