Duff Disaster

I love Christmas, and I hate Christmas. I love Santa, the yearning to live in a fantasy Currier & Ives scene, imagining that I could have my house decorated by Martha Stewart, that I'd cook hundreds of wonderful things, but mostly that my kids would have the best Christmas ever. I love shopping and I hate shopping - there's a million things I want to get, and it's completely overwhelming, and sometimes despite planning, I leave a store because I panic. I love cooking and I hate cooking - I so want to do it and then I've bitten off more than I can chew (no pun intended) and I cry because for the 4th time, I've gone to the grocery store and come home with nothing I needed for that certain recipe. I love seeing people, and I hate it, I have to psych myself up to leave the house, because sometimes I just can't. And to boot, I have two girls with birthdays right up against it, so I can add on the need for two more best birthdays ever. The build up is huge - the planning and shopping, agonizing over whether things are good enough, freaking out over money spent, and then it's over. And I have convinced myself that I have been a failure. That it wasn't good enough. I didn't have a wonderful open house, with a beautifully decorated home, perfect tree, lovely foods and warm mulled cider to serve with tons of homemade goodies. No, I have a messy house, half-done tree, dogs that get completely wigged out by people and don't behave (so please don't be insulted when I don't invite you over), and still worried about how much everything cost and whether it was good enough. I probably would think it wasn't good enough, even if it were perfect. Then the birthdays: I get completely confused over what gifts I bought for Christmas vs birthday, and thought I knew where they all were but then can't find some, no wrapping paper, etc. But, one of the things I do (ironically for my own self-redemption and a further attempt at creating the best-ever day) for everyone's birthday is make whatever the birthday person wants for a meal, including for dessert/cake. This year, my New Year's (Jan 4th, close enough) baby, turning 14, responded to my request for what she wanted on her menu in typical teen fashion being purposely annoying, "some kind of pasta with cheese, and strawberry ice cream". That's it. What? No, for crying out loud. So I figured out the dinner part, and dessert I decided that I was going to get one of those cool Duff mixes I've seen at the store, the zebra striped one - she'll love it! Little did I know it would be horrifying...

You've probably seen Duff Goldman - makes funky cakes, bakery in Baltimore. He was the crazy cake guy on tv until Buddy Valastro, a.k.a. the Cake Boss, showed up. I am pretty sure his show isn't on anymore, but he's on a store shelf near you: Stop & Shop, Target, etc., with all kinds of products: cake mix, fondant, sprinkles. And he even sells pans and other accessories on his website, duff.com. So I decided on the zebra cake.

What you can't see from this picture, is that the front says "makes 1 (one) 9 inch cake", and then on the back of the box, the instructions say to prepare ONE cake pan. One. You are not going to yield a two-layer 9 inch cake, you are never going to make a cake that looks remotely like what's on the package, so I get 2 boxes. I also do not want to roll fondant - I wanted a bright green frosting and don't like to make frosting, so instead I got a Pillsbury frosting I've never seen before, from a line of "Funfetti" frostings

Looks cool, right? Bright green with blue, green, yellow, and black sprinkles. Love it.

On the directions, you need two mixing bowls - one for the chocolate cake mix, one for the white. Stands to reason. So I prepare my completely normal 9" round cake pans and get to work. Easy to mix, nothing special about that, and then this neat technique of creating co-centric circles of cake batter, alternating chocolate and white. You're supposed to use a toothpick or something to gently swirl the batter. That wasn't so simple since the white and chocolate cakes are different, but I can't be worried about that, so onward. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, make two! Cakes in oven, set the timer, and wait.

About halfway through the cooking time, I'm smelling some really aromatic cake. Normally, you're pretty close to done with baked items when you start getting a fairly strong, yummy smell coming from the kitchen. This is really way too early. I'm curious so I go take a peek. OH MY GOD! These cakes are bubbling and flowing over the pans like Mount Vesuvius, and cake batter is going all over the oven. What the !?!??! So I grab my biggest cookie sheet and put it on the rack below to catch anymore dripping, and praying that it stops soon, shut the oven door and wait.

The timer goes off for what should be the end, or close to the end of baking, but the cake's not done...it's still raw in the middle. Back in the oven for 5 more minutes. Check it - raw- back again. I continue this until we're bumping up on an hour baking cakes that should have been done in about 30 minutes. At one point I had to cover the cake with foil because it was browning a lot, too much on the edges, and that didn't help. It was finally done pretty much at the one hour mark, and I took it out, put it on a cooling rack. Then another dilemma - do I try to get it them out of the pans while they're a little warm, or wait until they're completely cool? Duff doesn't say and it's about 9pm. I'll wait! Again.

Morning comes and the cakes do not magically release from the pans. Oh I see... the cake that flowed over the sides is locking the cake into the pan. No prob, I'll cut it away. Still not out... alright-y then. The edges appear to be released from the sides, but just in case, I'll run a knife around. Still not coming out. Well, my next theory is that the kitchen gets really cold, and maybe overnight the grease used to coat the pans has gotten cold also and is just acting like glue, so I warm the bottoms very slightly and... they're out! And guess what?! In the middle of each cake where, incidentally, you pour the cake mixes on top of each other repeatedly, it's completely undercooked! Like, don't eat it undercooked. AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! Why?! These cakes, the baked parts, are also sooo soft that they are falling apart completely in my hands.

This is already looking untenable, but in order to frost, I need to refrigerate or even freeze them. I decided to go the freezer route (quicker), and cross my fingers.

When the cakes come out of the freezer, they are not different! They're just turning into crumbs while I look at them. So what do I do now? I could crumble them and make the world's ugliest cake balls by combining the cake with the green frosting. No! Ick! I will make a valiant effort at frosting them. It was just awful. It couldn't be done. As you pulled the frosting around the side, it would just grab the cake and continue to decimate it. I got angry. Really angry at this cake. When no one was looking, I used my beautiful, large icing spatula, to...well, hack it up. I was so mad at the cake, and at my incompetence at cake decorating. I never like to throw food out but this piece had to go, and not just because of my taking out my rage on it. Even without that, there was nothing to this layer, it was actually embarrassing to look at. So I try cake number two -

it looks not quite as bad, but I cry over not having this cute cake for Lily that I wanted to make her. I feel so bad - I can't give her this cake! It's so awful! And Bruce would not let me throw the second one out! I ran to the grocery store and got a back-up pretty cake from the bakery.

So what went wrong? Here's my theory:
The chocolate part of the cake was like a normal chocolate cake, BUT the white part was like a chiffon. Problem - two different densities and two just plain old different cakes. You start off with the chocolate batter, and alternate with the white. You are constantly putting one on top of the other, and letting in spread out in circles. The problem is that when chiffon cakes cook, they get really fluffy. They rise more than a traditional cake batter. And here you have the two mixed, hence blowing up and over the sides of the pan. A 9" springform pan would have stopped the overflow, but not sure if it would help with the rawness. I think you'd still have some undercooked cake there because there were two different kinds of cake batter: thick and not so thick. Parchment in the bottom of any cake pan can help with release, and would have here for sure.

Upside:
I learned how to do the zebra cake, so I never have to buy this Duff mix again. Incidentally, it's very easy to find instruction on making a zebra cake by just a simple web search. Here's a pretty cool cake tutorial. The cakes were, however, very delicious, and the inside was totally zebra-y. It just looked like it was attacked by wolverines. [Side note: I've seen people have pretty good luck with the tie-dye, so maybe that will work for you if you wanted to try a Duff mix.]

When it was time to light the birthday candles, I asked Lily to choose which cake to put the candles in: Ugly Duff or Pretty Store. She picked the Ugly Duff. When she had a piece, we laughed about how dreadful it looked, and she said she could "taste the love". And we laughed again. And everyone ate both cakes. I guess although Duff was a disaster, the dinner itself wasn't ruined, Lily was happy, and that finally made me happy.

The end.

P.S. Two days later I discovered the frosting lid containing the sprinkles I completely forgot to put on the cake. Brilliant.