a disastrous evening

I had a totally disastrous evening yesterday. On days like this, I should never be allowed into the kitchen but who's to tell me no. First I had this craving for potato salad; one of my all day favourites. On my way back, I grabbed 4 medium size potatoes from the shop. Got home, washed the potatoes, filled the pot with water and some salt and put them to boil.

While I was waiting for the potatoes to soften, I decided to start my other project; baking a cake using honey to substitute sugar. A tip published in the newspaper made it sound too easy. It said to use 25% less if substituting with honey. One's liquid and the other's solid. How do I relate sugar and honey ? That was the first issue that cause some healthy brain cells to die ! Then I thought to myself, never mind ... I agak-agak can already (making a wild guess). So I put the softened butter and half a bottle of honey into my mixing bowl and started off. Thank God I have this good habit of breaking eggs into a bowl before mixing into my cake batter because (yucks !) one of the "fresh" eggs that I bought was bad ! I always try to do everything the fast and easy way and will always beat rather than fold the flour into the batter. As I have always done, I put 2 tablespoons of flour into the batter and started the mixer. For the first time and I don't understand why, I found myself and everything else covered in flour ! Tiu Niamah !!!! Haiyo...how can such things happen. Like it was my first time baking or what.

Meanwhile, my potatoes were done, dunked them in cool water and left them in the pot. Put the cake in the oven and set the temperature to 170 de.C. Next I set the timer of 35 minutes. Done. Meanwhile, I started to peel and cube the potatoes and put them in the fridge to cool. Wah...the cake beginning to smell really good (stomach rumbling and saliver glands activated). I noticed that the cake was browning a bit too fast on the top and changed the oven setting and lowered the temperature a little. Got back to my potato work, added 2 tablespoons of mayonaise, a squirt of salad cream and dashes of worchesterchire sause, black pepper and finely chopped garlic. Mixed them all up and sat down to enjoy my much anticipated potato salad. Aiya...my potato was still hard in the centre !!! This was the 1st catastrophe. Meanwhile, cake was still in the oven and smelling great.

The timer sounded "cring" and I checked my cake. It was still wobbly in the centre so I let it bake for another 15 minutes. The time passed and I turned off the oven and took the cake out. Let it cool for another 15 minites and took the cake out from the pan. It was a bit too browned on the bottom but that was fine. Later when I cut the cake, I found that the top was a bit too "crispy" and the bottom part of the cake was brown on the inside too. That was my 2nd catastrophe. Not only that, I spoilt my non-stick cake pan when I dropped it, left cake crumbs all over the floor and dropped the sppon I used for the mayonaise on the floor. What else could go wrong ?

Overall, the potato salad tasted good, the cake texture (the good part) was perfect and the sweetness was what I always wanted. Today, I am going to give the cake recipe another go. This time, I'm gonna use the entire bottle of honey, use more flour and reduce the number of eggs. Here's yesterday's recipe :

250 gms softened butter (reduce to 200 gms)

180 gms honey (increase to 300 gms)

200 gms self-raising flour (increase to 220 gms)

5 eggs (reduce to 4)

1/2 cup of full cream milk (reduce to 2 Tsp)

Dash of vanilla essence

Wish me luck !