Project 52 : Story

Look at this beautiful dreadful masterpiece...  Here's the story...

I love to bake and create masterpiece desserts.  Its one of my favorite things to do when I have time to do things on my own and without kid/family distractions.  I'm usually pretty good at it.  After all, I have successfully made a replica of Olive Garden's Black Tie Mousse Cake without event.  I'm not fabulous and will never win Cake Wars or anything like that but I can usually make a decent looking confection.  Anyway, with Easter coming up, my sweet brother (ahem), knowing this love I have, decided to challenge me to a make this beauty.  Now if you actually took the time to look at the link, you will realize instantly that the above shot doesn't look a lick like the picture in that amazing lady's blog.  Now I'm not one to share my embarrassing baking attempts in public, but this fiasco was worth the share and the warning story...

I followed the directions to a "T".  I did everything just like she said and thought I was doing great until I tried to remove the peanut butter cup from the pan.  I used a million (read 18) chocolate bars just like she said in order to make removal a non issue.  However, the ganache never hardened.  Never set up.  Never became the beautiful work of art that now crazy lady said it would.  I ended up using my hands to dig it out of the pan.  So now I'm frustrated, puzzled, covered in chocolate up to my elbows, and stuck with a pile of ... well something that doesn't look pleasant.  What the heck was I going to do with it all?  I didn't want to waste all the ingredients (and money/time) and I still needed a dessert for Easter dinner.  So I logically shaped it into this mess above.  I tried to make it a bit more beautiful by drizzling it with white chocolate and peanut butter but alas it still looks horrible. :)  The only redemptive quality?  Its TASTE!  Boy, even though it looked awful, it tasted amazing!  Super, super yummy!  And even though I will probably never try this again (at least not unless I get a silicone cupcake pan - I used a metal one which may have sealed my fate from the beginning), I will definitely be using the chocolate cake recipe that is included in her recipe for the peanut butter cup again in the future.  It was the most delicious, from scratch, chocolate cake recipe I have tried to date! 

Moral of the story?  I will stick to my day jobs of mom/wife/social worker and leave the baking to the professionals!  And you?  Well you can just enjoy laughing hysterically at how this cake looks NOTHING like it was supposed to...  boy oh boy...