Some recipes should come with warnings written right at the top of the page: WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT UNLESS YOU HAVE ATTENDED CULINARY SCHOOL! Or maybe in order to be less exclusive, they could put in small print beneath that warning: "You may also attempt if you have sufficient life experience commensurate to a culinary degree - e.g., you have six kids and have clocked over 10,000 hours in your kitchen. Otherwise, put down this recipe, back away slowly, and reach for the easy mac."
Because my recipe book doesn't have those handy warnings, I attempted to bake "Raspberry Glazed Lemon Mousse Cake" today. *hangs head in shame* I know. Even the title sounds fancy. I should have known better. I was just telling someone how I've been getting better at cooking, though, so I think I was puffed up with false pride. I thought, "Raspberry Glazed Lemon Mousse Cake? I can do that!" I was so naive.
The reason I decided to attempt this recipe in the first place was threefold: 1. I got a new recipe book and wanted to try a recipe from it. 2. The recipe called for a stand mixer, which I recently got at a garage sale and had not yet used. 3. It called for raspberries, which are on sale for $1 this week at Meijer.
Can we talk about stand mixers for a second? Every housewife I look up to says that they're a "must have," but they're upwards of $300. Why do I need something to mix for me? I can mix with my arm and a spoon. In the event that I need something a little more intense, I can use my hand mixer with the little metal doopies that spin around. Why do I need a mixer that goes on my counter? I have yet to figure this out. When I found an extremely well-priced stand mixer at a garage sale, though, I decided to give it a try.
Well, I still don't get it. My mixer works well, but it took a bit of the fun out of baking. I put in my ingredients...hit a button...and then the bowl started spinning and the machine started mixing. I just stood there and watched it. What fun is that? I had nothing to do...until the recipe said to turn the level from "low" to "high" after two minutes of mixing. Let me tell you - turning a mixer on level "high" is a bad idea. I hereby vow to never do it again. Globs of lemon mousse flew everywhere! It was like turning on a blender with no lid! How dare those mean people tell me to turn the mixer on high? I looked to see if the next direction in the book was, "Did you actually turn the mixer on high? Ha ha SUCKER!" but it wasn't. So I'm still not sure about why they wanted me to do that.
After I turned off my psycho mixer, the book told me to "fold the whipped cream into the mousse." Um. How does one "fold" whipped cream? Do they want it folded hot dog or hamburger style? Do they want me to get fancy and make a crane? YOU CAN'T FOLD CREAM, RECIPE BOOK! IT'S CREAM! In the end, I decided that "fold" was just a fancy kind of mixing. Sort of like how name brand shirts are fancy, but at the end of the day it's really just a shirt and no one would know the difference if you wore one from New York and Company or from Wal-Mart. So "folding" sounds fancier, but no one would really care if I just mixed it up, right? Therefore I put the whipped cream in the mixer and turned the mixer back on (on low, obviously). Well... I think folding is actually kind of important, because my mousse ended up all lumpy. I repented, turned off the mixer, and tried to "fold," but the damage was done. It was time to cut my losses and move on to the next step.
I was supposed to set up the vanilla wafer crust (see how yummy this sounds?) in my springform pan. I definitely do have a springform pan. I got it for our wedding and thought, "Wow! I can make all sorts of fancy wifely things with this fancy pan!" Amazingly, though, I've come across a shockingly low number of recipes that require one. When I finally needed it...the springform pan's moment of glory...it was nowhere to be found. It's like the kid that's been benched the whole game is finally called in...and he's at the concession stand. Where was my pan?? I couldn't find it, and I had to improvise with this weird cake carrier stand thing that vaguely resembled a circular shape. I knew I wouldn't be able to get my cake out and display it nicely like I would be able to with a springform pan, though. What a shame.
The raspberry glaze on top is made partially from fresh raspberries and partially from raspberry gelatin. This part of the recipe looked deceptively easy - how could I mess up jello? Well, mostly because I wasn't making jello. I was making "raspberry glaze," which is apparently a lot more complicated. You have to mix the gelatin with boiling water, then immediately dip it an ice bath to initiate rapid cooling. Then you have to wait the exact right amount of time until your gelatin is "slightly thickened." If you wait too long, it comes out like a jello jiggler, which doesn't look nice. If you don't wait long enough (like I didn't), then it just spills all over your entire creation and makes your carefully crafted crust a soggy mess. In my defense, though - the gelatin started out the consistency of water, and I stirred it until it was the consistency of corn syrup or molasses. I think that qualifies as "slightly thickened," don't you? The recipe book should have been more specific. I hold them accountable.
In the end, the cake wasn't pretty. It was pretty horrible looking, if I'm being honest. I was going to just throw the whole thing away, but I felt bad throwing away all of the good ingredients I had purchased to make it. I decided to try a little slice. The taste was actually pretty good! Sure the mousse was a bit lumpy and the crust a tad soggy, but it definitely wasn't as bad as it looked. Rex even had two slices. So really maybe the whole thing was't a total fail, but I think I'm sticking to boxed brownies for a while after this.
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