Today’s Tuesdays with Dorie selection, Tiramisu Cake, chosen by Megan of My Baking Adventures (click for recipe), turned out to be a little bit of a ‘cake wreck’.
I made half of the cake recipe and baked it in a springform pan, to make it easy to remove and hopefully easier for us to finish! The cake baked up nicely and came out of the pan with no problems. When I started to cut it in half, though, it broke up into a bunch of pieces. Waah!
Since I haven’t mastered the art of taking photos of the baking/cooking process (sticky hands and all), I don’t have any to send in for cake wreck of the month. But being a trooper, I just puzzle-pieced the cake together and frosted it over – it’s always great when you can slap some frosting on it and hide all your mistakes.
After all the drama, I realized I had forgotten to put the chocolate inside, and since the edges were pretty unsightly anyway, I had the bright idea to use it to cover them up. Isn’t this how all great recipes are created?
No matter – it was still delicious and was enjoyed by all. The cake was tender and had fabulous flavor. My liquor of choice this time was Kahlua, which I really enjoyed, and I think all the suggested flavors would be great. Next time I would make more of the espresso syrup to give even more of the espresso/liquor flavor to the layers. And maybe just bite the bullet and make the whole cake!
Shortbread 
The finished product looks great! I thought you were being clever by putting chocolate on the sides!
Right, that’s what I should have said!
What an adventure! Despite all the cake is great.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Great cake.
I did this the other day. I baked a wonderful blueberry cake in a Bundt pan. I have never had anything stick to this pan, but this cake did. I mashed all the pieces together the best I could, drizzled it with icing, and everybody loved it.
Such an interesting day baking this cake…it looks great no matter what happened. Your picture is really nice and looks really yummy.
I think it looks great and would have never known of your trouble, that is if you didn’t tell.
I agree – if you hadn’t told, I never would have known. But I’m so glad you liked it – I thought it was great too!
It looks fabulous!! I love cakes that you can rescue like this (believe me, I have been there) – after a few deep breaths, you can just move on and plaster it over.
Just found your blog and can’t wait to look around! I’m a Birmingham gal myself…and see you just got Frank Stitt’s cookbook! I love him. Such a genius.
Yeah, some cakes just don’t want to leave home, and when they do they just crack up. (Okay, not as funny here as it was in my head.)
But it does look good.
I don’t understand why it is a wreck! It looks good to me. if that’s a wreck then probably everything i have made ever is a wreck too!
Thanks – it just looks good on the outside, but is a wreck on the inside!
hummmmmmmmmmmm