Spread the love

Today we take a look at my latest bake. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances from people I had to cut corners while making it. You don’t have to worry though, I have moved one and removed the problems.

This started out as a random set of ideas I had for a different cake to make. I looked at several different ingredients, so that is why I happened to choose coconut.

Technically, I won’t share the entire method that was used. Only there are some errors in this recipe. I wrote things such as 1tsp salt when creating it. I wasn’t smart and just used a tablespoon. Similarly, I wrote 1tbsp baking powder when I was inventing it. I used a teaspoon. This is literally only shared to let you know I was probably not very cognitive due to what was being done to me.

Ingredients before mix

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) – butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup – sugar
  • 4 – eggs
  • 3 cups – flour
  • 1 tsp – baking powder (should have been 1 tbsp)
  • 1 tbsp – salt (should have been 1 tsp)
  • 1 cup – milk
  • 2 drops – Flavour Nation Vanilla Flavouring
  • 3/4 cup – olive oil
  • 1 cup – sweetened flaked coconut divided
  • 1 cup – coconut cream
  • A splash of blue food coloring

I didn’t consider a few things correctly. The first being the amount used of liquid ingredients versus the dry ingredients. After mixing it using 2 cups of flour I basically had coconut flavored soup, I believe.

Similarly, I actually need feedback on the ideas here. I honestly feel I cooked up a recipe that has far too much in liquid ingredients. Do I actually need to have 1 cup milk at all?

The soup I accidentally had

The Method

The method is fairly simple, it is similar to the cakes I have made in the past.

  • 1. Mix all the dry ingredients
  • 2. Mic all the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients
  • 3. Preheat the oven to 180°C
  • 4. While your oven is heating you can divide the cake mixture into two baking trays
    – The ones I used were circular trays, roughly 8” and 9” pans, this ended being roughly a 5th of the pan.
  • 5. When the oven is ready, bake for 40 minutes
  • 6. Cool it to room temperature, similarly, you must take it out the trays when it is ready for that
    – The weird mix of my ingredients made it easy to keep breaking pieces off, it was too soft
  • 7. Wrap the baked cakes into plastic wrap and place in the freezer for at least a day
    – I left it for 3 days, I didn’t trust that having the crushed coconut in it would become solid enough

While it tasted awesome, yes I literally accidentally broke pieces off while taking out the tray so I had an excuse at least, it was extremely soft. I wasn’t even sure it would be solid enough to easily eat with a spoon.

After the next set of steps, I thankfully tried it again and I found out some interesting ideas.

Before on the left, after on the right
I managed to, thankfully, get the smaller cake to stay together more

The Mirror Glaze Attempt

I have never actually done mirror glaze before. I can let you know that for free. I just happened to mix one thing up completely. I went through several recipes, choosing to stick to the one that seemed to be used more often. This brought a slight problem for me, I got started then realized I didn’t have enough sugar. I used icing sugar, so on the technical side, I didn’t even try to make an actual mirror glaze.

  • 350g – white chocolate
  • 150ml – water
  • 300g – icing sugar (sugar was meant to be here)
  • 200g – condense milk
  • 19g – powdered gelatin
  • food coloring of your choice
  • unglazed frozen cake

The method was quite simple, yet it turned out I had to adjust it over, and over. Consider having never making mirror glaze before? Nevermind that, I started making it and with things boiling on the stove with the gelatin in found I didn’t have sugar?

Long story short, I used the icing sugar. I noted the adjustments to what the recipe told me below as you will see. I made a glass that was successfully a glaze, it just feels like I didn’t do everything correctly.

The wrapping for the freeze so that we could do this attempt at the mirror glaze
  • Sprinkle the gelatin into the water, mix it thoroughly until it starts to thicken
  • Let this mixture sit until it fully thickens (I didn’t wait for long enough)
  • Get the water up to the boil (the recipe I used shared immediately, yet weren’t we meant to wait a bit?)
  • Put the sugar and condense milk in, take it to a light simmer (the ingredients made it extremely difficult to simmer, it just didn’t take much heat then instantly went full boil)
  • Pour the mixture over the chocolate until it dissolves (I accidentally just put the chocolate into the pot, that takes longer to melt and is more difficult)
  • Let the glaze cool to a lower temperature (they said desired, without sharing the desired temp?) then blend the food coloring you chose into it. (technically, separate it into multiple bowls and do the separate colors here?)
  • Then wait till it is below 34°C then you can pour it over the cake (I accidentally didn’t wait till then, so it was too much of a liquid still. That’s why my two colors mixed together)
  • Pour it over the top of the cake until it starts running down the sides, then use a spatula to scrape off the excess glaze

I pretty much butchered the idea of the glaze recipe. So, rather don’t use what I did and experienced for yourself. I hope that next time I do this I will be getting it better. I should have also, which wasn’t written on the recipe I used, put a layer of normal icing sugar on first.

I figure the main idea behind the glaze will work for me in the future, I will just, hopefully, be in a better state when I make it.

The Afterthought

When I get a hug to say thank you for the cake I enjoy it with a thankful heart. That paid for all the problems I accidentally caused. You can understand that I bake as a literal hobby, where others make a living from that.

As for the ingredients, the accidental mirror glaze sugar replacement was too sweet. I was literally worried about that, if it had been the intended sugar it would have been a little bit less. I, however, still didn’t do the rest of the glaze correctly anyway, yet I got something along the lines of what I intended.

Similarly, the slight mess in the salt versus baking powder hit me hard. That was after I put it in the oven I realized it, mind you. As it turns out the salt accidentally in the mixture hits a bit hard, thankfully that actually compliments the attempted glaze. The icing sugar being used it happened to make that too sweet, so think about that. Inner a bit salty, icing a bit sweet, thankfully, these complement one another.

The view, as you will note below, the glaze is freezing…

Note, don’t keep it in the fridge afterward when you do this, by the way. It freezes the glaze over. I only do that as I don’t have enough people to share it with. So leaving it out in the open would dry it out completely, unfortunately.