Trade-off

You see, I had this bag of flour. A large, heavy bag of flour for the purpose of making delicious Edmonds goodies. It was sitting next to my desk at work, but was too heavy to carry all the way home. It sat there for over a week, before it occurred to me that Tai goes past my house every day on his way home. I offered him a deal: drop my flour home for me, and I'll bring in a cake tomorrow.

Tai lived up to his side of the bargain, dropping not only my flour but myself as well directly to my door, so I really had to keep my side of the deal. While watching TV in the early evening, I flicked through the remaining cakes and chose marble cake (p51): not too tricky, and no extra ingredients required.


Instead of the usual 'cream flour and sugar' method, this recipe begins with beating eggs until thick, then gradually adding sugar. You then fold through sifted dry ingredients, followed by melted butter, and - oddly - a couple of tablespoons of boiling water.


The mixture was looking nicely light and fluffy as I separated it into three bowls. One bowl was to remain plain, the others needed to be coloured - one with red food colouring, one with cocoa. The thing is, it took a fair bit of stirring to get each of these colourings properly combined, and the two bowls of coloured mixture had lost that lovely light fluffiness by the time I'd finished.

I spooned each of the mixtures into a 20cm square tin and ran a knife back and forth through the different colours to create the marble effect. I was a bit concerned that the mixture was only about 1cm deep in the tin, but put it in the oven in the hope that it would rise sufficiently.


As usual, I took the cake out a bit before the specified cooking time to check if it was done. It was definitely cooked - maybe even slightly overdone. I left it in the tin for ten minutes before turning it out onto a wire rack.


When the cake came out of the tin, I had to laugh at the shape of it. It had risen in the centre, but was still only about 1cm thick at the edges. It didn't look appealing: it looked comical. I didn't even know how I could cut reasonable slices out of a cake like that. In the end, I cut the cake in half, spread one half with jam, and sandwiched the other half on top - upside-down, skinny side to fat side. The pieces were then a more consistent size, even if they were a bit wonky.


We had a few giggles at my lopsided cakes, but the marble effect was quite successful, and they didn't actually taste too bad - perhaps a little dry, as a certain tactless individual chose to point out under the guise of constructive criticism. Tai was happy with it though, so I'm going to consider that debt paid.