Cake batter that hates me.

I had to laugh this evening. I need a cake for 60, so I'm doing an 8 inch and 12 inch tier. Took 2 huge batches of batter. I double checked quantities, wrote out adjustments I had to make, and got going. I replaced the milk with a coconut milk and regular milk mixture, used coconut and rum extracts instead of vanilla... But I totally screwed up. I added the egg mixture instead of the milk. It's the reverse creaming directions from the Cake Bible, I just grabbed the wrong bowl. Got everything the right consistency, had to add extra milk, and went to taste it before putting it in the pan. Good thing I did, because it turns out I forgot the sugar! (And the baking soda I found out later.) Added the sugar and stuck it in the oven. It took a little while to bake, but the cakes turned out okay. Not too dense, didn't sink way down or explode out of the pan.

Started batch 2, following the directions EXACTLY! Made sure everything was in, and in the correct order. My 8 inch cake exploded out of the pan and then sunk down in the middle, and looks very brown. The 12 inch didn't get too high, sunk in a little, but is completely dark brown on the outside!

What gives? I got better results when I totally screwed up! I'll just be scraping the cake with my tiny-holed grater, like sanding, and filling in the holes with buttercream, because I don't have ingredients or time to bake another batch. I'm thinking that if I had left off the baking soda it wouldn't have acted that way. Any ideas? The pans and the oven were exactly the same each time.

The only reason I have the book is because I found it at a thrift store for $2, and grabbed it for recipes and ideas. Then I found out it was supposedly this huge deal book. The couple of recipes I've tried aren't that great, except her neoclassic buttercream. That's awesome! (If a bit yellow... so I'm wondering if the technique would work on a meringue buttercream. I feel a cake coming on!)

By the way, when we cut and served the cake, the layer that I had forgotten the sugar and added it in at the end (which is embarrasing because I've been baking for YEARS!) was VERY dense and sort of grayish in color. The second batch, that I had to scrape, was lighter and tasted better, and was more yellow in color. Luckily the whole thing still tasted okay and everyone loved the lime curd and mango buttercream filling!

LOL, my lime curd was just a fancy jar off the grocery store shelf. And the mango buttercream? I did use the Neoclassic buttercream from the Cake Bible, with the corn syrup instead of sugar and water. I bought a mango smoothie thing that you can find in the produce section by the berries and whatnot, kind of like the Bare Naked smoothie things. I just made the buttercream and whipped in the mango smoothie stuff until it tasted good. I kept the cake chilled so the extra liquid in the buttercream didn't hurt it any, and that smoothie was really thick too. It is the same principle as adding in a fruit puree, I just didn't like the texture of the mangoes at the store that day, they weren't very ripe.

I spread on the lime curd and then a layer of the mango buttercream, which I also used as my icing dam. 1 batch made enough for the filling, so I ended up making 2 more batches of just regular buttercream as the frosting so the flavor wouldn't be too strong or compete with the coconut white cake.

Oops, I did add a tiny bit of rum extract to the mango buttercream! Forgot about that!