Lockdown diaries - the case of the never ending baking of a cake...

Well life has changed as we know it. None of us had a clue that we would be in this position when the clock striked midnight at new year. Now there is a lot of bad stories out there. I am not for one minute belittling the suffereing and the incredible heroicness of those who have cared for those that have gone through covid 19. There is indeed a lot of sadness out there, however we can find lots of joy in even in this lockdown period.

So here are some funny stories during lockdown and the journey that I have been on. Lockdown has been an amazing time to rediscover creativitity in my life. Incredibly I have even been able to be creative in my job as well. I have discovered something called Plarn which is basically making objects out of plastic bags, so I am really feeling not just creative but also an eco warrior.

 I have also started baking again, half way through a bit of a baking marathon one saturday I remembered I have a bread maker....

So here's the chocolate cake story, it was a saturday a couple of weeks ago and I decided to make a chocolate cake and then I thought I will also make a banana cake as well. I decided that it was going to be creative saturday. It doesnt usually take long for me to make batter for cakes. So in no time at all I whipped up two cakes, felt very proud of myself. I decided that I would put the chocolate cake in the oven first. I left the banana one on the side in the meantime.

An hour later I thought to myself I should be smelling cake by now infact I should be smelling burning, why can I not smell anything.

So I went to the oven, I opened the oven, I put my hand in the oven tentatively and thought oh Angela you haven't put the oven on. Then I looked at the dial and sure enough I had put the oven on, so why was my cake not cooking I mean not at all. On, off, on, off, I tried that for 15 minutes, it was not working. Finally I decided that this oven was dead it was not working, it was not going to resurrect it was kapput.

Right great I have no oven and two cakes that need baking what on earth am I going to do? Ah I thought to myself I wonder if google has any ideas. There must be another way to bake a cake I thought to myself. So I googled it - how to make a cake without an oven?

Amazing I found it, don't you just love google 3 seconds to find something. So I watched a video of making a cake on a cooker top.

Well I thought to myself I don't have any choice I am going to have to give this a go, I don't want to waste two pans of cake batter.

Here goes, so I found my wok, and a few more pans, steamer some foil.

Here is the direction the you tube video gave me:

Get a large pan put the steamer in the large pan, (it didn't say anything about water but I thought to myself, well without water this pan is going to burn. Place the cake tin in on top of the steamer. I didn't have a lid so I got another frying pan as a lid to put on top of the cake tin and then like the girl said I put foil on the top. I turned up the heat and waited. Now the girl said use your nose you will know when it is cooked.

So I thought to myself well if it would take say 1 hour in the oven I guess it would take around 3-4 hours. So after a few hours I lifted up the lid, well it was rising a bit but it certainly not cooking or finished. So I gave it a few more hours, I still couldnt smell cake.

So I went to check on the cake every hour or so, I still managed to do some other things during that evening. Even after 8 hours I still couldn't smell cake. I kept adding water everytime I didnt smell cake but I could smell the pan burning. Oh boy I thought to myself this is a disaster.

To make matters worse half way through the evening I thought to myself don't I have a bread maker. I bet I could use the bread maker to make a cake. So I had a look at the book and there it was programme 14 making a cake.

So I looked at the cake in the pan, for a moment I thought could I dig it out of the pan and put it in the bread maker. By this time the cake had started cooking and I thought well I have passed the point of no return that cake is just going to have to stay there, besides it wasn't for me and I didn't want to give them a mashed up cake. So I waited and checked waited and checked.

It was getting really late and when I say late it was 2pm in the mornng, so I thought it must surely be done by now. Well guess what I still couldn't smell cake and it was no where near done. So I thought oh my word so what am I going to do now?  Well it's got raw eggs in I can't leave it out all night it will go rotten. So the only thing I could do was put it in the fridge and hope that it didn't sink in the middle.

By this time the cake had risen a little but by the next day the cake had sunk back down but at least it wasn't sunk in the middle.

It's the next morning or day, I had, had enough of this cake I had planned to gift it the day before but alas it still wasn't ready. Here we go again I thought it will need to go on the cooker again. So I got the pans out fresh water etc and we started off again. I thought well it should only take another hour or so it must be almost cooked by now.

Let me tell you that cake took another 4 hours after the 10 hours it had taken the day before so that cake took 12 hours to do make.

Finally I did a final knife test and hallelujah it was done. I took a deep breath and delivered the cake to a friend. Now I never tasted that cake because for one it was not gluten free and second the cake was for someone else. So I actually have no idea what it tasted like whether it was in fact actually cooked. My friend said that she enjoyed it. Let me tell you there was lot of love and prayer that went into that cake.

You may be thinking what happened to the second cake well the next day it went in to the bread maker and it was my virgin cake in the bread maker another friend had given me the year earlier.

Why it took lockdown for me to get the bread maker out I will never know but at least I am using it now.

I wonder if any of you out there have any funny baking stories like mine, it was stressful at the time but at least it made a great story - happy baking !!!

Here is a banana bread created from my bread maker

And I started to make bread as well :)