Chocolate Cake Fail

I've been trying to clean out my pantry and wanted to used some of the Valrhona Cocoa Powder and stumbled across a chocolate cake recipe in a cookbook that I borrowed from the library. The recipe sounded pretty good...chocolate powder, strong coffee...I started whipping out the batter. Then when I was already invested in the recipe, I read the following "tip." 

Taken from "The Food52 Cookbook" by Amanda Hesser

"...pan leaks during initial 10 minutes of baking, as the batter is very liquidy. I recommend placing a cookie sheet on the lower rack to catch the drips."  I guess I should have read this PRIOR to making the batter for the cake.

I had a difficult time capturing a picture of my batter-dripping pan because of the oven's heat.  But as you can see, I actually followed the tip and placed a pan directly under my cake pan (it's usually a hit or miss if I decide to follow instructions. I'm the type that usually does not read the instruction manual for electronics and intuitively plug through the processes or programming).  It dripped for 20 minutes!  As I watched my batter seep through the bottom of the pan, I kept saying to myself, "I'm so dumb, this is a silly recipe."

I ended up making TWO cakes.  My final cake was only 1 inch in height.  Boo! The flavor of the cake was a not too sweet deep rich chocolate (almost what I imagine an Oreo cake would taste like), so in hindsight, the recipe was not bad, I just should have made it in a 9"x13" pan. The recipe was simple enough, so I may attempt to make it again,

Toffee Fail

A few months ago I had the desire to make toffee. I looked up a recipe and started heating up the butter and sugar. Apparently I may have "shocked" the butter mixture by changing  the temperature too quickly, and thus oil weeped out of the toffee mixture. Making toffee is considered "candy-making" and apparently, if it is too humid in your kitchen, it is not a good day to make candy because the candy may absorb moisture and result in a softer or incorrect finished product. 

This looked pretty nasty and gross. A bunch of oil pooled up in the middle of my toffee and I wanted to just dump the whole pan. Then I thought, "Man, butter is an expensive ingredient and I used TWO sticks to make this toffee." 

.

Yet, I still decided to complete the recipe and topped the toffee mess with some Ghirardelli chocolates and nuts.

Here's my finished toffee.  A melted mess! I ended up breaking it into pieces, refrigerating it, and then giving it to a friend. She ended up salvaging it by making toffee cookies.