Falling cakes

Last night I had my first real cake failure.

I say "real" because of course there have been some unsatisfactory cakes in my past, cakes that didn't look so pretty, cakes that didn't quite taste like they were supposed to, cakes that were in fact brownies.

But until last night I had yet to make a cake that was totally inedible.
And I blame Emeril for it.

My first mistake was probably in choosing a recipe that called for no flour and 11 eggs, seperated. But FoodNetwork.com gave it an "easy" rating, so I got brave.

I thought everything was going really well. I looked like a pro separating the yolks and whites. I beat the fuck out of those whites, they formed nice pretty peaks.

I think where I really got hung up was when he told me to "beat the yolks until they are pale yellow and ribbon-like." Ribbon-like is not an adequate description. Not to mention when you beat yolks they don't bear any resemblance to ribbons, not even after 10 minutes. They look like eggs.

But still, I was optimistic. After I added the sugar, the yolks bore a strange un-egg like resemblance to floured cake mix. And the chocolate and butter mixed right in. Then came folding in the egg whites.

This is where I blame Emeril. Why is there no video showing me what the mix is supposed to look like? Mine ended up looking like the vomit of a college student who has drunk to0 many irish coffees, with chunks of egg whites floating in a sea of brown eggie goo. Also, I had about twice as much as I was supposed to. As in, I filled up an entire other cake pan.

Its a testament to the good rum my mom brought back from Haiti that I didn't stop right here.

I put those fuckers in the oven. I left them there for two hours like the recipe said. I pull them out and....they're not baked at the bottom. At all. Mud fudge.

Which is when I realized that possibly I shouldn't have put a baking sheet underneath them to catch any leaks.

So now I have two completely ruined cakes, a pan of half melted white chocolate sauce that was supposed to go over them, and half an hour to get to Giant Eagle and buy a birthday cake.

Bobby Flay's recipes never treat me like this.

I feel like Audrey Hepburn at cooking school in Sabrina. Where is my nice duke to show me what's wrong with my souffle?