Baking like a pro

With the weather getting chilly these days, I felt like using the oven again. Then I remembered the book my hubby gave me some time after we got married.

The Williams-Sonoma Baking Book

I never really got to use this book because the recipes all seemed a bit too difficult. First of all, the ingredients were not to my liking, with things like eggs and buttermilk having to be in 'room temperature' and never ever using self-raising flour but only plain flour. Another difficulty was that I've never tasted most of the cakes and pies listed in the book, making it hard to know what the thing is supposed to taste like.

But one particularly cold afternoon, I decided to give it a go. I chose the most easiest looking recipe: Espresso Pound Cake. I would've tried just plain pound cake, but that one required me to use sour cream (at room temperature) that I didn't have. I went through the recipe step by step.

Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together into a bowl.

Nah. I'll just use self-raising flour, thank you.

Stir in the ground coffee.

Well, I don't have ground coffee at home, let alone 'freshly grounded coffee beans' as the recipe requires. Also, it's just weird eating ground coffee. You usually brew them and throw them away, don't you? I'll just substitute with cocoa powder. We drink cocoa instead of coffee when you need to stay away from caffeine anyways.

Using a stand mixer, beat the butter with the paddle on medium speed until creamy.

I don't have a stand mixer, but an electric hand mixer will do, right? Wrong. The butter flew everywhere! But what can I do? I must finish what I started.

Butter splattered on my kitchen wall

Add the sugar and beat until the mixture is pale and fluffy.

This time, the sugar sprayed all over me. This is turning into a disaster.

Slowly drizzle in the eggs, beating well after each addition.

OK. I'm not going to have eggs all over my kitchen. After some contemplation, I finally came to the conclusion that it would be silly to expect the stickiness of the eggs to somehow keep the butter and sugar from spraying on me. By this time, I decided to forget about the recipe and just mixed everything in using a wooden spoon. I poured the gooey mixture into the loaf pan and stuck it in the oven, praying that it will turn out decent.

After 50 minutes and frantic scrubbing and cleaning of the kitchen, I took the cake out of the oven. It looked decent enough. I cut a slice. The inside looked like normal pound cake. I finally took a bite, fearing the worst. But it was surprisingly delicious. Yay! It may not be a Williams-Sonoma Espresso Pound Cake, but it was a sweet, home-made cake that went perfect with a cup of milk. Mission accomplished.

Sammi's Home-made Cocoa Pound Cake

Maybe hubby should buy wifey a stand mixer if he wants any more baking done?