Cake-Baking: "To Conquer Without Risk is to Triumph Without Glory"

My cooking weakness is baking. It's no secret. And look, despite my wonderful new man oven, I've had a spate of bad baking lately. Relationships don't always go according to plan.

One example of my recent baking failures is this attempted Donna Hay mud cake:

 

Looks fine, sure, but it was dry. With a dryness that may be likened to a bone. Not even a chocolate fudge sauce could save this dehydrated disaster.

After this fail I had pretty low cake-esteem, so I'm not sure what possessed me to offer to bake my adored friend's birthday cake for her upcoming party. I think it was partly my determined streak and partly because I like doing practical things for friends, especially adored ones.

The Adored One's favourite cake is Hummingbird Cake - like a banana cake with coconut and pineapple and a cream cheese frosting - and I decided that this was It; if I couldn't even get this simple, straightforward recipe right, then it was time for baking to join 'taking photos even with a digital camera on auto setting' on my list of Can't Do's. It all rested with this cake.

I bought the correct size cake tin. I bought the finest ingredients Woolworths had to offer. The party was in three hours. Nothing could go wrong.

Nothing was going wrong until my recipe didn't specify whether or not to drain the crushed pineapple before adding it. I ran to Google to check what other Hummingbird Cake recipes advised, and to my great alarm, some said to drain it, even "thoroughly", and others said to add the juice.

Panic. Rising.

I started trying to figure out an average ratio of wet to dry ingredients across a number of recipes, but I wasn't that smart and I didn't have time to get that smart. My whole cake-baking future was riding on this; to juicify or not to juicify?!? I was at an impasse.

As I held the can of pineapple in one hand and the mixing spoon in the other, I looked to the sky for inspiration.. and suddenly a bone-dry mud cake flashed through my mind. I felt those moistureless crumbs in my mouth, the parched cake flesh on my tongue.... 

In went the pineapple, in went the juice, and I spanked that cake into the oven before you could say "start over with a different recipe". It was done. 

Fast forward three hours:

Looks fine, sure, but the true test was to come after the Happy Birthday had been sung, and all the candles had been blown out... and with a roomful of guests waiting for cake, I picked up the knife and faced my fate.

I sliced gingerly through the frosting and  plated up a small piece... a bit crumbly... I took a deep breath... and gobbled.

It was moist. 

It was delicious!

Success was mine! Glory was mine! I would live to bake another day!

That day came the following week when I volunteered to bake a chocolate coconut cake for Mum's _ _th birthday.

Looks fine, sure, but I had to cut half of it off before I iced it because there was a major sink-hole in the top.

Perhaps I should just give up cakes.