August brings a lot of birthdays in my circle of family and friends, and since I love to bake, I’m often known to whip up a cake or two for the occasion. Jai’s Grandpa was one of these August birthdays, and before he passed away in 2009 I would sometimes bake sugar-free items for him due to his diabetes. The first time I attempted this was for a family gathering in 2004, where he and Grandma (Also an August baby) were having a joint birthday party. My grand plan was to bake a regular cake for her and a sugar-free cake for him. What could go wrong?
I started baking my cakes the night before the party. A good friend of mine was staying with me in preparation for a flight the next morning, where she would be catching an early-morning plane to France to attend school for a year. Since we were heading out in the wee hours of the morning to get to the airport, we decided not to bother going to bed since we’d only catch about an hour of sleep anyway. Since we were up, I decided to start whipping up my cakes.
Utilizing a box of Splenda made for baking, I set about creating my diabetic-friendly cake. At some point while mixing up the batter, I made a few substitutions – I don’t recall exactly what, but I have the tendency to adapt recipes as I go. To make it extra pretty, I added some food coloring – just like those adorable cakes you see on Pinterest! Except something went horribly wrong while it was in the oven. Whatever clever tweaks I had made to the recipe hadn’t agreed well with the Splenda, and I ended up with two cake layers that were flat as a pancake in addition to being tinted a lovely shade of moldy green. Mmmmm!
What was my thought after seeing this abomination? Maybe it will look better when I frost it. That’s 2 AM logic for you! So in a last-ditch attempt to save this sorry cake disaster, I tried making sugar-free frosting. I soon realized how ill-prepared I was for this, seeing as most frosting recipes which I had used prior to that point were 90% powdered sugar. I believe I tried combining the Splenda with margarine to make the frosting, adding in some blue food coloring to compliment the swamp green shade of the cake. I’m guessing the mixture of oil caused the food coloring to form droplets on top of the frosting. At this point, I could see that it was pretty hopeless, but since I’d already come this far I figured, “I may as well frost the thing and see how it looks.” At this point, my friend was cracking up and told me: “I love that you just keep going with this.”
As you can see from the photo, we were actually brave enough to try a tiny bite just to see how bad it was…and yes, it was terrible. It wasn’t fit for human consumption, but the birds enjoyed the crumbs when I threw them outside. I had to take a picture before tossing it because it made me laugh so much! The second creation I made was a regular, full-sugar cake for Grandma – a chocolate and white marble cake that actually looked really nice, but I didn’t think to take a photo of that one because it wasn’t funny. I’ve gotten a pretty good system down for sugar-free baking since that time, but this first attempt was definitely one of those “It’s the thought that counts” moments!
What’s your most memorable cake disaster? Have you ever had an epic flop with sugar-free baking?
Beeb Ashcroft
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Baking is not my thing, so most cakes I make are a disaster, lol.
No cake disasters, but I made homemade fudge once, and accidentally used salt instead of sugar. True story. 🙂
It’s a Zombie Apocalypse Cake! hahahahaha! I love anything foodwise that is swamp green! I’ve had so many disasters, they usually stem from me leaving out the baking soda or baking powder. Ugh, flat, thick, hard, dense grossness.
I’m glad to see you can laugh about it!
That is so funny. Thanks for sharing your experience. I know many of us (or at least me) can relate. 🙂
Thanks for sharing your experience. I’m sure there are many of us, myself included, who have had our own baking disasters.
I have never tried to make a sugar free cake. It looks pretty difficult! Kudos to you for maintaining your sense of humor.
O.K. no way to sugar coat it. Your right that looks like one heck of a baking disaster. I’m sure you’ve progressed significantly since then 🙂
Lol sounds like something I’d cook. too funny
Good thing you can see the humor in it 🙂 For my daughter’s second birthday I made an Elmo birthday cake….um using red food coloring with white icing (which of course we all know unless you use the Wilton paste comes out pink). Thinking MORE red food coloring would change it, we ended up with a ‘Barney’ purple color on Elmo. Sigh….
It’s the thought that counts. I am sure your grandpa appreciated that you tried.
Oh yeah. We’ve had a few cakes like these.
Well, I’m not good at baking, period. ~lol~
Lol, I love that you shared this cake fail. So many times we see perfect cakes and I don’t think it’s realistic. This looks like something I would bake. You are brave for trying it and I love your honesty.
I’ve never tried baking sugar free, but I have had some epic failures with gluten free baking. Things like biscuits that could break your teeth and banana bread that was mushy. I’m better now, but the learning process was awful.
Baking disasters are terrible when they happen, but make for great stories later!
I haven’t really had any cake disasters but I just stick to the recipe LOL I am too scared to substitute