Butterscotch Layer Cake

After a lot of confusion (self-rising cake flour is different from cake flour and self-rising flour... a homemade recipe can be made using regular flour and baking powder) my sister and I made Nigella's tempting butterscotch layer cake. The picture made it look delectable with oozing butterscotch-cream cheese frosting. Well, once again, we were disappointed.
After the first two layer "cakes" came out maybe 1/4 of an inch thick, we remade them with the homemade self-rising cake flour solution. Same result. When it was all worked out and assembled the product matched the picture but the taste resulted in the renaming of the recipe to "Burnt Butterscotch Disks."




Thoroughly a bust. The cream cheese frosting that looked so inviting really tasted like ... sugary cream cheese. My mom feigned appreciation and insisted she liked it, owning it up to "British taste." Uh... apparently Brits like burnt, dense circles coated in cream cheese. Onto the next one.

Learning To Bake: Lesson One, Madeira Cake

I'm home for the summer in Rockville/Gaithersburg and have quickly realized that most of my high school friends have flocked to other places for internships, etc.
I have a waitressing job at the seamy establishment Joe's Crab Shack and this weekend I'm starting my broadcast journalism internship at Rockville Channel 11. But I needed something besides working out, reading and generally moping around to get me through my downtime. I also happen to have a dessert fixation that borders on compulsive.
I decided to cure both my illness and my boredom by learning to bake.
My mom has probably every cookbook Nigella Lawson has ever published so I decided to use "How To Be A Domestic Goddess" as my guide. A domestic goddess, probably not but at least I'll be able to cook more than grilled cheese.



The first recipe in the entire book was Madeira Cake. It looked like a yellow pound cake and called for lemon, so I expected a lemon pound cake-like result. Wrong. Though the sugar topping had crisped up nicely, the Madeira Cake was bland and off-putting. My mom and I decided it would be better with berries and whipped cream on top; but then again, berries and whipped cream are good alone and what's the point of burying the cake in goodness just to masquerade its mediocrity?
So that was an epic fail, but I followed the recipe to a T so I don't feel my ineptitude is to blame.
I won't be cooking every recipe in the book (I have decided to bypass most of the other loaf cakes) but I will be trying a variety. Pictures to come.

Update: here is the Madeira Cake, in all of its eggy glory. The crispy sugar top turned out nicely, though.