I wanted to bake a cake for the baby of our chopped and blended family who is turning 12 today. Ree Drummond’s big four layer chocolate cake looked perfectly suited for my BIG personality daughter by marriage, Ava. As my reader friends know, I’m not the best at following recipes. I did wait three hours after the cake cooled to try to assemble it. Okay..fine…maybe two. I just want to stress when Ree gently recommends “freezing the cake layers for best results” it should be more of a requirement.
The cake was delicious, moist and SUPER chocolatey….but not good for building a cake tower. The architect in me wanted to add skewer reinforcements. Once I placed the fourth layer, the cake was just started to slide and slowly fall apart. Oh…. the slow motion HORROR!
In the fight between ideality and materiality, materiality won today. Freezing the layers may have controlled it’s angry soft moistness long enough to assemble.
The cake is now supported in a trifle dish. Still delicious. All four layers wouldn’t fit in the dish. We have a separate bonus single layer cake. No one is complaining. My other two daughters have generously offered to take care that cake.
Lessons learned:
- Maybe try to follow the recipe better next time by freezing the layers before assembly.
- Maybe big personality needs containment, whether by temperature control or structure. We all need support sometimes. Support doesn’t ruin our inner deliciousness.
Here is Ree Drummond’s recipe.
The Hungry Philosopher 