This is How I Get Myself Into Trouble

Winter break is over.  Back to a classroom full of eager young seventh-graders.  Very eager.  Eager for anything but the vast plethora of English language expertise I can impart. 

My free time is limited as most of the time I'm either grading papers or revamping lesson plans to meet the new Common Core State Standards. My goal is to make at least one cake a week and post about it.

So, tomorrow is the day.  I'm going to try another recipe from the New Mexico Extension site I linked to in a previous post.  It caught my eye because instead of using butter, it uses oil.  It's a white cake recipe, a tabula rasa if you will.  A white canvas just begging for me to mess around.

This is how I get myself into trouble.  I just can't leave a perfectly good recipe alone.  Make it as written?  Are you kidding?  No!  I can improve upon it.  And usually that's true.  And if the original was perfectly fine just the way it was, you can bet my tinkering will yield something just as good.

Except when it comes to cakes.  Nope.  When I start mucking around with cake recipes, I don't create something wonderfully tasty.  I create wonderfully shaped flops that might be wonderfully flavored IF I spread enough frosting on them.  I did create one decent experiment, a Swedish cake with coconut to which I added a couple handfuls of chocolate chips.  But how wrong can one go by adding chocolate?  In any event, the husband ate it and liked it.

So, this white cake.  Something in me is just itching to tinker.  I will set the eggs out tonight, so they will be room temperature tomorrow when I get home form church and begin to bake.  Maybe as I sit listening to wisdom from the pulpit, I will repent of this dangerous course I am now contemplating.  Maybe my heart will soften, and I will recommit to keep the commandments--stick to the recipe.

Somehow I doubt it.

Nevertheless, I now post the recipe I will, in all likelihood, sully tomorrow.  Maybe you will try it as is and tell me how it went.

WHITE OIL CAKE

5,000 ft Oven temperature: 375°
2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup cooking oil
1/2 cup minus l Tbsp milk
1/2 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup egg whites (3-4)
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
l cup sugar

Directions

• Grease and flour or line two 8-inch layer pans with waxed paper.
• Mix and sift flour, baking powder, and salt into mixer bowl .
• Add oil, milk, water, and vanilla.
• Beat 2 minutes on medium speed, scraping frequently.
• In separate mixing bowl, beat egg whites and cream of tartar until stiff but not dry.
• Gradually add sugar to beaten egg whites and beat to a stiff meringue.
• Add meringue to batter and fold in, using about 40 strokes.
• Pour batter into pans.
• Bake at 375° approximately 27 minutes.
• Remove from oven and cool it pans about 12 minutes.
• Remove from pans and finish cooling on rack.

Altitude Adjustments
7,500 ft:
Same as 5,000 ft.
10,000 ft:
Decrease sugar to 1 cup minus 1 Tbsp. Increase egg whites to 1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp.