In anticipation of birthday events – and knowing that the grocery store always inflates the prices of things like cookware - I went to a nearby big-box home goods shop and purchased a cake pan for $8. Later, at the grocery store, I realized I would need two cake pans and found a second one, right there in the spice aisle, for only $5. Which just goes to show that economy isn’t always where you expect to find it.
As for the first cake pan, behind the label I found an intriguing recipe: Take a box of chocolate cake mix and throw in some malted milk powder. Chocolate-malt cake!
Chocolate malt cake, however, wasn’t on the birthday menu this time. Toffee Bar Cake was. The idea – as I imagined it, inspired as I was by Chocolate Malt Cake – would be to crush up a Heath Bar, make a batch of regular chocolate cake batter, mix the two together, and enjoy. I proposed this one to NBB and, while he generally approved of the scheme, he pointed out that the chocolate might be too overpowering. Yellow cake instead, perhaps?
I had to agree with that.
So, a few hours later, I was at the grocery store weighing the relative merits of a box of yellow cake mix, and a box of cake flour. Pros of cake mix: easy, cheap, and you don’t end up with a box of cake flour that sits in the cupboard forever. Cons? Just not as honest – not “real food,” I think my mom would say. Pros of cake flour plus sugar, eggs, etc.? Well, it IS undeniably real food… but that’s about it.
But that counts for a lot.
Not enough, as it turns out – In the end, I went with Duncan Hines French Vanilla Cake Mix. I imagined that the “french”-ness of it meant that it contained some special extra ingredient (not just yellow dye) to make it wonderful. I had also looked at their “butter recipe” cake – but to my dismay, found no butter in the ingredient list. The philistines!
So French Vanilla box cake recipe it was, and to add to the convenience? I bought pre-crumbled Heath bars – with which, I suppose, the road to Hell is mostly paved.
The rest, of course, is easy: cake mix goes according to directions. Though the mix directions asked for 1/3 c. oil, while I went for 1/2 c. butter (that same spirit of defiance that refuses the blindfold at the firing squad, right?) and dropped in some heavy cream to ensure that it would be moist. Then mixed in half the Heath crumbles (they come in a bag, just like chocolate chips), divvied the batter up into the two cake pans, and sprinkled the rest of the toffee bits on top. If I were to do this again, I’d wait until the cooking was partway finished before taking this last step – I think that the toffee on top before cooking made the cakes rise unevenly.
All in all, the results were tasty, if not particularly attractive, and (surprisingly) not too sweet. Topped with whipped cream and accompanied by coffee, it was a nice morning snack – chicken salad having left no room for dessert the night before. For, what benefit a man to enjoy a birthday salad, but miss out on birthday cake?
Incidentally, the cake pan that cost 60% more? Did not perform 60% better. In fact, both pans performed about the same.
Go figure.
