Masterbaking with Napoleon Syndrome: A Recipe for Disaster Part 2

I got home, clicked on some tunes and took a deep breath. I started with a little Xavier Rudd - some nice bluesy classical guitar to serenade my sanity.  This recipe looked gnarly and it was going to be a lot of tedious work. Slowly and gradually adding, by the spoonful, flour into my stiffly beaten egg-whites (and other ingredients)  was something I imagined was important so as not to compromise the consistency of the batter and while I was immediately proud of the fact that I got the consistency right, after the15th spoonful of flour I found myself glancing over at my trusty Kitchenaid mixer.  I bet I could totally do it that way now that enough of a dough has formed. Oh yes... I was already looking for the easy way out. But in my defense, it really did accelerate the process. Thus, after the 17th spoonful, I had completely caved to my lazy side and transferred my little ball of dough into the mixer, put it on low and dropped spoonfuls of flower in while I multitasked with starting the beans for my chili, and the potatoes for my potato salad.  When it was all said and done the dough was velvety soft and firm enough to roll out.  I again relished in pride with a shimmy of my hips and a brief dance with the dog, who had taken up residency in a spot on the floor where she laid with one eye open anticipating dropped gods.

Rollin' in the dough...

By the time I got to separating the dough and beginning to bake my sheets of pastry (for lack of a better term) I was already starting to a feel a lull in motivation.  I was about an hour and a half into me endeavor and my acoustic hippie jams were great in the beginning, but I needed something that packed a little more punch.  So I cranked up a playlist of 5 Finger Death Punch, Journey, Tool, and a energetic mix of bands and started on the next phase.  After the 3rd hour I openly declared with an exasperated sigh, "Oh, I have sooooo much respect for professional bakers now."  Not that I didn't before.  But I felt like it was worth declaring. My friend had taken to texting me a pic of his "light lunch" to which I responded with a pic of my work station and the simple words: "... a light endeavor, surprise!"  I figured it might be difficult for him to make out the wording on the top of the recipe but I proceeded anyway, surely maybe the pic would stand out... the pic of what the cake was supposed to look like when it was done; all 16 layers of crust sandwiched in equal layers of rich custard.

Upon review I can see how this might be a bit obscured on a tiny cell phone screen...

After a solid 5 hours in the kitchen I took a break.  I hadn't really done that great of a job at modifying my recipe to meet my needs, and I did an even poorer job of actually baking the dough to spec.  What came out was misshapen wafer-like cookie sheets, so I knew was looking at some excess in the custard department - since the recipe yielded enough for me to have to break out my oversized wok in order to appropriately execute the demands.  An hour of carefully mixing 9 egg yolks, butter, vanilla, 6 cups of milk and a wealth of other ingredients and ensuring that the heat didn't reach the boiling point all while "stirring constantly," was a little trying on my patience; add to it the fact that I needed to mix the custard constantly while it cooled as well. By this point I had already finished up the potato salad and had it chilling in the fridge, and the beans were simmering nicely. I had even managed to get the pork loin into the oven to slow roast for a couple of hours as well.  I was nearing the home stretch!  All I had to do was assemble my brilliant masterpiece and throw it in the fridge to chill and form. This was the easy part!  I stretched my back, cracked my neck and got to work. I fully expected (by the looks of the dough) that it was going to look nothing like the pic and maybe even completely look like shit.  I didn't care.  I was proud of myself for staying committed and not throwing everything in the trash and hittin' up Marie Callendars for a pie. 

Coincidentally my pork loin roasted itself nicely with the final step being a few minutes on the grill for a nice golden crust. "It's time for wine!" I proclaimed and cracked open a bottle of chilled white for a celebratory swig whilst preparing for my friend's arrival. An hour or so later he arrived and the feasting began.

The goods...

Dinner was exactly as I hoped it would be.  Nothing was overdone or under-done and I was even somewhat surprised, given how preoccupied I was with the dessert.  When it was finally time to break out the dessert I proudly reached into my fridge and broke out the cake.  "I decided to give it a go at making that cake you were telling me about."  I cracked the ring from the first mini springform pan and transferred his cake onto a plate.  We looked at it quizzically.  It looked amazing, but nothing at all like it was supposed to and I was pretty sure that while it was my ineptitude at proper execution, it was also the fact that it probably hadn't chilled long enough.  What mattered was that it had chilled long enough to eat... and so we did.

My masterpiece

Midway through dessert I made a comment about how funny it would be if I spent all of that time only to find out that it wasn't the right cake.  "It isn't... but its still good!" he said with a chuckle.  "What?" I paused, "I thought you said it was some Russian cake that was all complicated to make?!"  He responded with laughter, "Nooooo I said it was a German Lightning Cake that was a basic coffee cake that was simple to make."  "What?!"  By now I couldn't help but laugh.  Grabbing my phone, I Googled the Lightning Cake recipe and found it to be not only significantly less labor intensive (guess I could have gone on that ride after all), but non-requisite of any specialty pans, minimal ingredients, and straight forward; Prep time: 1 hour.  I laughed some more,  "Awesome!"  I shrugged, "Oh well, it was well worth the experience, and now there will be an awesome story to tell for generations to come... what is your favorite cake, anyway?" He responded with a simple answer: "Orange cake."

Since that night the story has been told 4 different times and has secured itself a spot in stone as an ongoing joke. I suppose a legacy is still a legacy, even if it is forged by accident.