Oatmeal cake

Blogging has caused some changes in the way I cook, especially when I'm baking. I do more measuring and less eyeballing these days, even if I'm making things up as I go along. I usually remember to take notes. And if I'm testing a recipe and make a mistake, I might even start over. 

This cake started out as a test batch of my garam masala oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe, until I accidentally added four eggs instead of two. This is not like doubling the amount of chocolate chips or cinnamon; those are changes that you can and should make whenever possible. Structural ingredients like eggs, milk, and flour really do matter, and while you can get away with fudging them a bit, doubling any of them is going to seriously change your texture, and probably not for the better. 

After whipping out a fresh batch of cookies (and confirming that my measurements were just right), I came back to my first bowl. It was a well-blended mess of butter, brown and white sugar, eggs, and vanilla. This is actually a pretty common base for all manner of delicious baked goods. The difference at this stage is more a matter of proportion than ingredients. I figured with two too many eggs this blend was too wet for cookies, but might be salvageable as a cake of some sort.  

As I like to tell novice bakers when they're worrying, anything whose main ingredients are butter and sugar can't taste too terrible. It might be too dense, or too gooey, or too floury, but toast the pieces up and top them with sliced strawberries and whipped cream, and you've got shortcake, no matter what you were trying to make. It is at this point that my friends get calls like, "Hey, I totally screwed up this cake (or pie, or whatever). It's weird. But not bad. You should come over and eat some of it." 

Lemon-thyme-rosemary cake #2

My last attempt at a lemon-herb cake was a beautiful disaster. (Full details here.) This one was a total success. It may have helped that I started with a different recipe. One without zucchini. Also, this time I remembered to add all of the ingredients before putting the cake into the oven.

You're still out of luck if you're trying to use up extra zucchini. I'll keep working on a zucchini version once they're back in season and I'm desperate for any way to use them up. On the other hand, this one will help you use up that huge bowl of lemons you have lying around — you'll need 8 or 9 of them. (If you don't have a bunch of lemons, remodel your kitchen and get Dwell or Apartment Therapy to come photograph it — stylists always seem to bring large bowls of lemons to the photo shoots).

Lemon-zucchini cake failure

This story does not end well. I think you should know that before you become emotionally invested or, even worse, follow my example. After the tasting but before the photo editing I considered whether I should try again, and again if necessary, until I'd produced a reliable cake whose recipe I could share in good conscience. On the other hand, the internet is full of reliable cake recipes. This one was kind of a disaster, but it was a beautiful disaster.

I love dishes that put ingredients into an unusual context and make it work. Olive oil ice cream. Rosemary chocolate. Basil sorbet. Finding myself with another overlarge zucchini on a bright summer day, I thought that instead of our typical chocolate zucchini cake I might try making a zucchini cake with lemon, rosemary, and thyme.