I waited until the hottest part of the afternoon to fire up the oven and figure out my next potential failure. I started to read about fondant (ewwww) and baking at elevation (we're at 1900 feet) and the fear of yet another overly sweet - lob sided masterpiece was too much for me. I glanced up at my cookbooks and noticed I had an overwhelming majority of Italian cook books. One is autographed by my first Italian teacher who wrote it. I didn't find a recipe in her book, but I did a search for Italian cakes and this one struck my YUMMY CHORD.
This is the point where things seem to go wrong. Right now they are cooling on racks outside the pan while I whip up the icing. They have been cooling for nearly 45 minutes. Crossing my fingers.
This tower isn't leaning ..... it's SINKING. Just as I suspected, a flawed cake, but I am learning along the way. Like reading a recipe first. This one, found on cooks.com called for "4x sugar" ... what the hell is that? Four times as much sugar? Four times sweeter? Apparently it's a grind. Like espresso vs drip on coffee. Well, I didn't have that. I had regular old table sugar, raw sugar, bakers sugar (could this do?) and confectioners sugar or as we West Coasties know it as powdered sugar. I read that powdered sugar is 10x.
Also this recipe called for a BOX of 4X sugar. Hellooooooo could you be more non-specific on a measurement? The frosting recipe called for 1/2 stick of butter, but never mentions it in the directions. I folded it into the cream cheese. It all called for "nuts" .. I guess that was up to me. I used almonds.
Something tells me it will taste ok and I will never be able to repeat it!
