A Disaster

It isn't very often that I have a true disaster in the kitchen. Last night was one of those nights. While we were at ballet class last night, Andy casually mentioned that he would love chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Sorry dear, not on the menu was what I basically told him. But after we got home, we found that there was nothing on that we wanted to watch, and we've been watching The Lord of The Rings again, disc by disc. So it was movie night for us, and as the kids got ready for bed, I whipped together a quick Brownie Pudding Cake to go with the second half of The Two Towers. After 30 minutes in the oven I opened the door with a tester, only to discover that there was still a layer of liquid in the pan. ????!!!! So I surmised that I had doubled the recipe and it must have needed to bake longer.

Pudding cake is something that I have long loved. I devoted a post to it here, where I discussed the glory of pudding cake, and shared the very recipe I made last night and have made many, many times before. After another 15 minutes in the oven, I began to wonder if my oven was off on the temperature- I've had that thought a few times lately, so I turned up the oven to 375 and let it go further. I checked it every 15 minutes, and finally after about 2 hours total in the oven, I pulled it out, hoping that I could salvage some semblance of dessert. It cooked backwards. The cake stayed on the bottom of the pan, and the pudding bubbled up to the top. The cake part had a dumpling like texture from cooking under liquid, and of course completely stuck to the pan. The pudding part was good- deep and chocolaty, and we still managed to eat it with a bit of vanilla bean ice cream. But it was not my pudding cake. I still have no clue what happened. I didn't spray the pan... that's the only thing I can think of, but the directions don't state to grease the pan at all, and I can't imagine that cooking spray contributed to the failure of the chemistry usually at work with pudding cake. Maybe my baking powder is failing?

Anyway, just thought I'd share that story this morning to show that I'm not perfect, and on occasion, a disaster does befall me and my cooking.