Chocolate Stout Cake Fail

I don't know what made me decide to bake a cake on the hottest day of the year so far (and when I say hot I mean 100 degrees in the shade). Well, yes I do. It was the beautiful pictures and descriptions of Leila's recipe and the fact that we had a stray bottle of beer in the fridge that had been languishing there for months.

I happened to have all the ingredients on hand so out came the KitchenAid.

I baked it in a heavily buttered bundt pan (bundt pans always make me nervous).

It fell a little in the middle (not sure what causes that).  I was disappointed, but I figured that part would be on the bottom once I turned the cake out, so it wouldn't matter all that much.

Well, guess what?  The cake stuck even though I took all the precautions like letting it cool before trying to turn it out!  The bottom (top?) part stayed in the pan.  Not cute at all!


But I decided to forge ahead and make the ganache frosting anyway and hope the cake would be edible.  I didn't have any heavy cream so I used this instead and left out the coffee granules.

 

The cake isn't exactly presentable, but it actually tastes good!  I feel redeemed!

My girls said strawberries went really well with it too.

 

So I guess the moral of this story is that even someone who bakes often, like I do, can mess up a cake. And sometimes it tastes better than it looks.