Raspberry Bundt Cake = Disaster

1/4 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
2 egg yolks
1 cup buttermilk or clabbered milk
2 cups a/p flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cocoa
1 cup raspberry jam

Combine flour, baking powder, salt, cocoa, cinnamon, and allspice. Dissolve the baking soda in buttermilk or clabbered milk, stir well. Cream butter and sugar, beat well. Add the egg yolks, beat the mixture well. Mix flour mixture into the creamed mixture alternate it with the buttermilk mixture, beginning and ending with flour mix. Fold in the raspberry jam. Pour the batter into a prepped (greased and floured or sprayed with nonstick spray) bundt pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes, or until cake tests done. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Remove it from the pan, and cool completely.

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I'm not afraid to post about my mistakes. I've done it before. And I'm sure I'll do it again. But that doesn't mean I'm happy about it. I hate messing up when I'm cooking. You should see how mad I get when I burn something, it's not pretty. So if the title didn't give you a heads up, here it is: this did not turn out well. It could have been worse, but it sure wasn't good. Anyway, here it is.

It's wicked cold up here. I could see my breath in my apartment this morning. Which can only mean one thing: it's time to bake. I wanted to make some kind of berry cake, but I don't have berries, only jam. So I searched the nets and found this recipe. I need to apologize to whoever originated this, but I forgot to copy down the link. So if this is your recipe or if you know whose it is, let me know and I will give you/them props. I would make one change to this recipe and that's to cut the cinnamon by half. I think a full teaspoon is a bit much. Plus I would grease the pan more. Much more. I'll get to that later.

First things first, combine (most of) your dry ingredients. Flour, baking powder, salt, cocoa, cinnamon. Whisk them together. Dissolve the baking soda in whatever kind of milk stuff you are using. Now I don't know why the recipe calls for this, can anyone enlighten me? I assume it's so it is evenly distributed, but that's just a guess. Now you want to cream the butter and sugar. I never use my hand mixer for this, I don't know if my cakes are suffering for it. But no one has ever said they are flawed or refused to eat them, so I'm not too worried. Heh. Add the yolks to the creamed butter/sugar and combine it well. Now you want to add the dry ingredients and the milk mixture. The recipe calls for alternating them, starting and ending with the flour mixture. Again, I don't know why. But I can only assume there is a reason, so I did it like that. Next is folding in the raspberry jam. Sure, it's not the stuff my mom made with the raspberries from the patch in our backyard, but still. Mmmmm, raspberry jam. Now you just pour it in a prepped bundt cake pan. I'm still using this craptacular silicon dealie. When I have money to spare (ha!) I want to get a metal one. This just doesn't brown very well. Anyway, how to prep the pan? Butter and flour is good. Nonstick sprays are adequate. However you prefer, that's the way to go. But don't be shy with whatever you are using. Trust me. Now toss it in the oven at 350 till it's done, 45-50 minutes. When it's done I suggest you pull it out. Let it cool for a while in the pan, then turn it out onto a rack. This is, I've learned, a sticky cake. Sigh. But the taste is ok, it's almost like gingerbread. For some reason. I think it's all the cinnamon. Not very raspberry-y though, which was really the goal. I think part of the sticking problem came from not mixing in the jam as thoroughly as I should have. Live and learn. And if you can make sundaes from your mistakes, even better. All in all I don't think I'll be making this one again. But I'll still eat the one I made. Heh.