When life hands you chocolate cake crumbles…

make a trifle.

When you can’t make a proper trifle because you don’t have a trifle/large clear bowl, use wine glasses.

When you don’t have any fruit or whipping cream to make the trifle, use gelato, toffee and ganache.

Well, I don’t know if it’s a trifle anymore but it sure tastes good.

So have I mentioned I hate baking?  I don’t know. I guess it is the precision that scares me, and the fact that if something doesn’t taste right, it can’t exactly be doctored up like you can with, say, a spaghetti sauce or a soup.

I had good intentions of making a German chocolate cake for Tom tonight. I had my recipes ready to go. I was a little worried about the coconut pecan topping because I tend to be pretty terrible when it comes to tempering eggs. I wondered if my chocolate frosting would turn out the consistency I wanted. I feared the whole decorating/piping of the frosting process. Never did I even bother to think that the cake itself would not turn out.

Actually the cake tasted delicious but the problem came when it was time to invert it onto the cooling rack. The first one did not work at all. I thought I might be able to salvage it if the second one came out great. I mean, just use some extra frosting to cover it up, right? The second one came out looking even worse. Basically both cakes looked like this:

I don’t know why I say “basically.” “Actually” or “unfortunately” is probably a  better choice of words.

So, why am I posting this craptastic cake? Just to show that everyone makes mistakes (particularly me, when it comes to baking) and that usually, they can be salvaged in some way.

To add insult to injury, I happened to be watching Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee at the time. I cannot stand that show, but I always find myself drawn to it because it’s just such a train wreck. Well don’t you know that Aunt Sandy, despite most likely being half in the bag, inverted two perfectly shaped cakes onto a platter. Oh man, I was totally shown up by FN’s biggest joke.

Luckily I hadn’t started the frosting, so I just decided to layer the cake crumbles with vanilla gelato and English toffee. I topped it with some chocolate ganache, and it was delicious.