Coping With Failure, or The Great Layer Cake Disaster

I’m a foodie, and am often in the kitchen experimenting with a recipe or some hare-brained culinary idea. Being Italian, I like to think it’s in my blood. The story I’m about to tell you, however, will make you doubt that I’ve ever SEEN a kitchen, much less used one.

Allow me to transport you two years into the past, where it had been a glorious day up until “the incident”. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, my war with the inter-dimensional slug beasts had finally reached a cease-fire. A group of friends was coming over, which included a girl I had spent the past few weeks attempting to woo. That’s right, WOO. The plan was to share some snacks, chill out and watch some movies. I’m a party animal.

On that fateful afternoon I felt the urge to bake. I’d describe my super-baking power level at the time as “eager but comically awkward.” I’d had some rousing successes and some….well, you might call them not-quite-successes. You might also call them “nuclear meltdowns.” Or whatever.

At this point, three thoughts collided in my head. One: I want to bake. Two: ladies tend to love chocolate. Three: cake is awesome. These ideas connected into one Ultra Mega-Zord Final Dragon-Punch idea – I, Ryan Dalton, foodie and amateur chef, would construct the greatest chocolate crème layer cake in the history of mankind, and I would top it with home-made vanilla marshmallows. Ambitious? Yes. Insane? Yes…… I don’t have a third question that makes this sound any better. I decided on a six-layer cake, and each layer would be filled with a delectable chocolate mousse. A dark chocolate ganache would frost the outer layer. In my wooing frame of mind, this seemed perfectly reasonable for a first attempt. Eeesh.

Fast-forwarding, the ganache turned out perfectly. The mousse filling came together beautifully, and tasted like a chocolate rainbow might explode from the bowl and sprinkle chocolate confetti across the barren desert, revitalizing the soil and ushering in a new era of chocolate prosperity. My marshmallows were cooling and promised to be epic. The cakes had baked, cooled, and I sliced them into medium-thick layers. They were spongy, moist, and filled with dark chocolatey goodness. My only concern was that they almost seemed TOO moist, but whatever. I sort of knew what I was doing, and everything would be amazing.

Cake assembly began. Layers one and two – success! Layers three and four – success! Layers five and six…………SUCCESS! All that remained was to spread the magical Ganache Frosting of Lady-Wooing on the outside and top it with the marshmallows. But, wait! Something was amiss in Cakeland. I’d made a small error that must be remedied. You see, I had lined the cake pans with parchment to make removal easier after baking, and as a result my cake edges were slightly jagged and uneven.

Good presentation is important. “You eat with your eyes first,” I said to myself. That’s one of my mantras, along with “Always have your towel” and “Never trust an inter-dimensional slug beast.” So I grabbed a knife and trimmed the edges, carving off the less attractive pieces and leaving a smooth surface to apply my ganache.

Then disaster struck. As I spread the ganache, I noticed an odd-looking line forming in the top layer of the cake. The line grew larger and deeper, and in seconds it had graduated from “line” to “rift”. My mood went from “awesome” to “UH-OH”, and I sprang into damage control. Clutching the sides of the cake, I endeavored to gently smush it back together. I believe I may have pleaded with it and promised never to take it for granted again. However, the chocolatey confection had tired of my ambition and decided to rebel! The rift widened into a dessert version of the San Andreas fault.

As if Hades himself had reached up from the shores of the River Styx and latched onto them with hellish fury, my six perfect layers imploded. With a great collapse, they oozed off the serving platter and painted my counter with dark, gooey failure. My reaction, both eloquent and appropriate, was something like, “NooooOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” I clutched at the cake as if it were my firstborn, mourning its loss. How would I get any wooing done now??

What had gone wrong? Remember my concern about the cake being too moist? Guess who was right. *thumbs up* This guy! It turns out those jagged edges, being slightly more cooked and firm, had been the only thing holding the entire cake together. Now, with its mortal bonds removed, my cake was free to seek a new life as a chunky chocolate puddle. Failure stared me in the face. My gourmet Cake of Wooing was destroyed, and my friends were a mere twenty minutes from arrival.

What would I do??

After a moment of cursing this mortal coil, I pulled myself together and decided to smash the whole mess into a “chocolate cake casserole”. Served with a side of ice cream, it was pretty good and no one was the wiser. So, to all of you out there, I’d just like to say that I have absolutely no point for sharing this story. In life we bake cakes and sometimes they rock, and sometimes not so much.