After two weeks of lazy days, I started to bake cakes again!
Because I always failed to get a fluffy sponge cake, I got bored to repeat that recipe. I know there should not be anything wrong with that recipe, as I've also found other recipes for sponge cake, which were all very similar. I didn't want to get another failed cake, so I changed my target of this week – German chocolate cake.
I compared a few recipes for it, and finally chose to use this one: [ http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/german-chocolate-cake-iii/Detail.aspx ]. Seemed things were already planned well ahead: I bought a bottle of buttermilk on Thursday, only with a weak thought of making a cake on the weekend.
I tried to know why I couldn't get a fluffy cake. Most answers I got online mentioned the importance of sifting flour. Well, I'd never sifted flour before. This sounded like a hard and messy task for me. However, I had to sift this time – luckily I found a sifter so I didn't need to buy one – I did want to get a fluffy cake.
Thus I sifted the flour, baking soda, and salt together. Surprisingly, it was so fun!! Also, the cake was not bad, though its shape was like a dome due to the heating issue. It tasted good!
Actually, I didn't add two cups of sugar as the recipe. Two cups sounded like the insane sweet. I added one and half cups of sugar instead, because some other recipes make cakes of similar sizes and with that volume. Plus, the chocolate I bought was semi-sweet. Fortunately, the cake was not over sweet. But I still think I should only buy unsweetened chocolate in future – I don't mind cakes with less weaker sweetness anyway.
Another thing: the recipe said it would yield about 16 servings. I didn't realize the actual size of 16 servings. Just, the recipe said I would need three 9-inch round pans. But I only had two 8-inch square pan… would it be okay for me? I didn't know at that time. But my two 8-inch pans were still safe for the total volume of materials – maybe because the square pans were deeper than those round ones? I guess. Yet two 8-inch pans were a bit too much for just my breakfast; I would share some with others on Monday!
Now, finally I was satisfied with my baked cake. Though it was in a dome shape, the taste was fine. Maybe I should re-challenge the sponge cake at next time. Well, who knows?