Baking Adventures

So I've decided lately that I need to learn how to cook better. Specifically I need to learn how to make delectable sweet things. Because other than a mean Chocolate Zucchini Cake that I can make from scratch (which is AMAZINGLY good, if I do say so myself), I can't really bake AT ALL. So I bought this recipe book of supposedly easy recipes to make from boxed cake mixes. So after I bought it I looked through it and decided on these beautiful little Luscious Lime Angel Food Cake Rolls. They looked so wonderful, so delectable, and the recipe seemed relatively simple. Well, needless to say, when I was done, what I had created did NOT look like the picture in the book. And, while the taste was not bad, it was definitely not worth all that work. It was rather disappointing. I have to admit, when I feel creative and decide to create something, if it does not meet the expectations I had of it beforehand or does not look like what I was envisioning in my head before I started, I get really frustrated and decide never to commit such a travesty again. Such was the case with the Luscious Lime Angel Food Cake Rolls. Needless to say, I did not take pictures, and I will not be making them ever again.

Well several weeks have gone by, and I decided it was time to get out the book and try again (with a different recipe, of course). I looked through the recipes and decided on the Double Chocolate Chip Snack Cake. Now the nice thing about this recipe was that there was no picture--thus no visible pinnacle of perfection to compare my meager attempts with. So I got started, this time with the assistance of my buddy Tristan, who is one year old. He poured in the ingredients, he held the mixer while I mixed, and he helped lick everything afterwards.

Well I finally get the cake in the oven. It consisted of a chocolate batter base, which was topped with a layer of chocolate chips, which was topped with a layer of a crumbly chocolate chip/brown sugar/butter mixture, which after baking would be topped with a drizzling of white chocolate. And I have to say, after I had finished drizzling, it actually looked pretty good. And then we ate some. And miracle of miracles, it actually tasted pretty good! So for once, my baking efforts were a success. So this time my efforts were pictorially documented, and I plan on repeating them. But I have to let the chocolate high wear down first.....