A Potentially Redeemable Culinary Disaster

After orchestra this evening, I had nothing to do. This is shocking, because normally I would have reading to do for the following morning's English class. (The topic of said English class could be expounded upon for a good long time, but that is not for today.) In any case, I had finished the reading a full two days before it was due, so that wasn't on the to-do list for the night. Instead, I came up with the brilliant idea of trying to find a recipe for microwavable chocolate cake. Who doesn't like the idea of instacake? So I sat at my computer and googled "making a microwavable chocolate cake," and came up with this one:


Now, I knew that it had the potential for being disgusting, but the picture looked good and it seemed like an easy project to undertake at 10:30 at night. I did take into account the modifications suggested by other people who tried it (add extra sugar, put in some melted chocolate chips), but as my college kitchen supply is minimal, I made substitutions for the substitutions. Not a good idea, but hopefully understandable considering the limitations.

Mine failed.



(The white covering is frosting that I poured on top; it looked even worse without it.)

However, I think that there is a possibility that it could be significantly improved for a number of reasons: 1) the consistency was really quite nice and cake-like; 2) the sweetness was acceptable - it didn't taste like bread; and 3) the only reason it didn't taste too much like chocolate was that I had to use hot chocolate mix and M+Ms when I should have been using baking cocoa and melted chocolate chips, neither of which were attainable. All things considered, the taste wasn't too bad, even though everyone agreed the best part was the store-bought frosting.

So the morals of the cake are as follows: be forever wary of deceptively simple recipes found online; try those deceptive recipes anyway, because you might be able to tweak them enough to be great; and never substitute ingredients that you know beforehand will not be beneficial to the overall taste. I think I'll try this recipe again once I have the proper ingredients.