Have you even wondered how this baker-blogger makes ends meet; buys all that butter for batter? No? Well, darn it, I am going to tell you anyway. I work in the music business mostly behind the scenes, sometimes in front of microphone.
Last March, I was summoned to Bear Creek Studios outside Seattle to help on a project with the extraordinary singer songwriter Brandi Carlile. My job, to ask Brandi questions from off camera to help her speak naturally about the project on camera. Call me The Artist Whisperer.
Have you even wondered how this baker-blogger makes ends meet; buys all that butter for batter? No? Well, darn it, I am going to tell you anyway. I work in the music business mostly behind the scenes, sometimes in front of microphone.
Last March, I was summoned to Bear Creek Studios outside Seattle to help on a project with the extraordinary singer songwriter Brandi Carlile. My job, to ask Brandi questions from off camera to help her speak naturally about the project on camera. Call me The Artist Whisperer.
Here’s the first piece from our day at Bear Creek. Blink and you’ll miss my handy work; Brandi speaking about her Mom’s influence on this song. But stay for the song and exclusive version of ‘Hard Way Home’. Like I said, she’s extraordinary.
Here’s the first piece from our day at Bear Creek. Blink and you’ll miss my handy work; Brandi speaking about her Mom’s influence on this song. But stay for the song and exclusive version of ‘Hard Way Home’. Like I said, she’s extraordinary.
(If titling my blog after a Staind song wouldn’t hasten the four horsemen of The Apocalypse, I would have called today’s blog ‘It’s Been A While’. It’s not that I haven’t been baking; it’s that I’ve been cheating on my blogging by actually…er…working. I love my new job; it’s all going swimmingly but I do miss the quiet tippy tapping in the soft light of the laptop.)
The title of this blog refers to what I must now acknowledge is a common occurrence: I f*ed up a cake. As I bake out of my comfort zone, I realize I have to make accommodations for mess ups. Let’s call it the Mistake Cake.
Unlike my Pretty On The Inside cake, The Mistake Cake (officially Martha Stewart’s Chocolate Bundt Cake) was pretty gorgeous.
The Dry Ingredients
Using Sharffen Berger Chocolate Adds Flavor (and sadly expense)
Yeah Yeah Yeah, get To The F Up!
Well, it came after the came out of the oven.
Right?
The recipe called for a chocolate glaze; very simple. Really just 4 ingredients melted together on the stove. Everything was melting according to plan, and then suddenly: separation! The elegant chocolate glaze turned into an ugly, gloppy mess. I threw it out, and made it again, this time paying extra care to the measurements. Same result!
Man, did I fret. I literally couldn’t sleep that night. But the next morning I looked at my cake and thought, “Consistency is hard.” It’s not that the consistency of the cake was hard, it was lovely, but being consistent is well, hit or miss. Or at least it is for me. That’s part of things being made from scratch and after months of baking and blogging, I accept that!
I also have more respect for people and things who do things consistently well: like Tina Fey, Bakery Nouveau and the makers of Gossip Girl. I hope someday to be a flop free baker, but until that day comes, I accept the mistake cake!
For those of you who cannot accept mistakes, I found this video of the making of this cake. Watch it: HERE
