No One Was Promised This Cake

Chocolate cake is hard. I struggle with getting a cake that tastes chocolate-y enough without being dry and not relying on chocolate chips turning into fudge.

So when I woke up on a Saturday with the stress of being stood up by a guy I've been seeing for the past 3 months, unable to hire someone for my team that has been 2 people short for over a year and mentally preparing to take my senior citizen mother on a trip abroad that has no real itinerary... Spirit said to bake a cake.

Now did I have time to bake a cake? No.

I needed to pack. I needed to find my passport. I needed to prepare my house for my absence. But somehow when I’ve reached my absolute wits end, I need to get my hands busy. This is how I’ve painted various rooms in my home. Every breakup comes with a fresh paint job. And I make the executive decision to avoid taping anything off, just cutting in all of my edges by hand. It requires me to focus.

Today my focus was cake. Chocolate Cake. Milk chocolate ganache. Blackberry filling. Swiss meringue icing. Piped decorations. Meringue cookies and fresh berries as decorations. Candied pearls.

Spoiler alert. I did not accomplish most of that.

I didn't even own piping tips. Grocery shopping took way longer than anticipated. But this was acceptable because I just needed to be focused on something 100% for and about me. Not my job. Not my family. No one has been promised this cake. No one is anticipating a slice. I didn't even post the baking process. It wasn't about that.

I decided to do 6" rounds to make 2 adorable Pinterest worthy cakes. Y'all, I got parchment paper cut for cakes, batter mixed and into pans in 35 minutes. I didn't know I could do anything that quickly.

Now while I enjoy cooking and baking, this is not a recipe blog. I just told you how extremely busy I am. Do not believe for one second that I formulated the perfect chocolate cake recipe. What I was able to do, was Google “Chocolate cake with coffee.” In my past when I did have free time, I learned that coffee allows the cocoa powder to bloom and provides a depth of flavor to support the chocolate in a way that vanilla cannot.

I was able to bake the cakes, get them out of the oven, cooled, wrapped and into the freezer. Now my project has stretched into a multi day event. Which was probably for the best. Now I get to put all of my focus into building the perfect cake. Because now I got to come back to it. Now I got to keep choosing it.

I baked purple meringue cookies. I made a blackberry filling. I made a chocolate ganache. And then I made my attempt at Swiss meringue frosting.

My first mistake was getting the swiss meringue recipe from a book that does not always explicitly explain every direction. Insert "fold in the cheese" meme. Second mistake was not ensuring my bowl was clean of all grease and moisture. Third mistake was no stabilizer. When I tell y'all that I never saw stiff peaks… I never even saw a peak. Now the meringue cookies were the most perfect stiffies you've ever seen. But this frosting did not have it. So once I felt confident that the eggs were cooked. I added butter. Now I could at least expect minimum shape. And I have created some version of a Swiss meringue buttercream.

And then I take out my meringue cookies, they look like lavender poo. And far too sweet to go with a chocolate cake.

At this point, nothing is aligning with the vision.

I didn’t have enough ganache. The blackberry filling was too wet. I was afraid to combine them and ruin both. So I pivoted. Again.

I made the ganache as the walls and filled the interior with the blackberries.

I stared at the piping tips I went to two different stores to buy and decided… absolutely not. I was not about to ruin what I had trying to force it into a shape it didn’t want to take.

So I plopped it on ever so gently to maintain looking fluffy. I added blackberries and prebought pearls as decorations. And then I just admired my work.

This was the whole point. Being able to completely own something.

I wasn't even hungry for cake. I just wanted to be distracted by myself for once. Not a screen. Not a phone. Not someone disappointing me. Not someone needing me.

Just me in my kitchen with a singular goal of Chocolate Cake.