Cooking and Castaway

So one of my favorite movies of all time is Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks. His character winds up stranded on a desert island, having to fend for himself against the elements, an abscessed tooth and hunger. A few days after his arrival, he has his first big success story and builds a bonfire, boyscout-style:

Earlier this evening I totally related, and was thumping my chest boasting:

I HAVE MADE BUTTER!

And not just any old butter… cinnamon honey butter.

My shiny new KitchenAid mixer arrived yesterday, and this butter was the second thing I made with it.

Behold, the mixer

So of course you’re wondering what was the FIRST thing? Well, I’ll get back to that in a little bit. Meanwhile, allow me to continue to boast on my baking prowess. I made THESE bad boys this past weekend. First time trying, instant success. Man, I’m good.

I HAVE MADE MACARONS!

So, yeah, feeling pretty good about myself in the kitchen. Well, Tom Hanks felt pretty good about himself on that island for awhile, too, but before long he finds himself huddling in a piecemeal shelter that is easily blown away by the tropical storms which frequent the island, and he retreats to a cave up a cliff, while suffering terribly from his bad tooth (which he eventually “removes” by using an ice skate that washed ashore…).

Now what happened to me wasn’t nearly as dramatic, but it certainly took me down a peg.

So, what was the first thing I made with the mixer? A cake! Easy, right? Well, normally. Ivy and I wanted to make these cute little bows show in the middle of the cake in a different color, but the sugar cookie dough I was going to use for that was waaay too soft. So we rolled it into balls, and put that in the batter, hoping to come up with kind of a polkadot or ladybug look (pink sugar cookies, chocolate cake), like this:

That was the plan.

Well… the cake Ivy chose was a dark chocolate fudgy batter. The mixer did AWESOME… it was almost brownie-like. Very thick… and, fudgy, as advertised. So into the oven it went with balls of colorful pink dough inside. Looked great, and I took it out on time. Set it to cool on the rack and… WHOOSH. Went from a lovely chocolate cake to a hideous chocolate crater.

OK, not so great, LOL. I wasn’t sure how to break it to Ivy because she was so excited when the mixer came that we went out to the grocery store at 9:30 last night to get the ingredients, and the first thing she said when we got home after work today was “Let’s make the cake!”

So I carved out a crescent (can’t call it a slice, since that’s not the shape it was holding), and handed it to her. Her eyes got big, and she said “All right!” and dug in. A few minutes later, she gave me a big thumbs up.

This is the best cake evah!

Thank goodness for almost-5-year-olds. They often see what we can’t 🙂

So, not a success by my standards, but man oh man, a very tasty failure! I’m looking forward to more of the same.