The Sourdough Cake that Wouldn't

As I mentioned in my last post, I gave up cake for Lent which was a bit inconvenient considering that this month's Sourdough Surprises challenge is cake. I decided to make mini bundts so as not to add to the growing collection of cakes that I can't eat in my freezer.

I really wanted to experiment but decided to keep it simple and make a chocolate beer cake. I used this chocolate cake recipe from King Arthur but since I only made a quarter of the recipe, I didn't use eggs but added a little vinegar and a extra liquid. I also swapped half of the milk for Red Stripe beer.

The recipe called for making somewhat of a poolish and this is where I made a huge mistake. As I mentioned, I was using half milk and half beer. The polish called for mixing the milk, starter and flour together. I wanted to add the beer later so I didn't add it. Apparently I forgot that I was making cake and not bread. With less liquid, this was perfect kneading consistency and I got a little mix-happy. And that meant GLUTEN!

There was really no way to "dissolve" all those gluten strands and there were specks of gluten strands in my cake. I could have tossed the batter and started over but really, that's a waste. I knew it wouldn't taste bad. It would just have a lump or two in it. Yeah.. that didn't sound appealing to me either but hey. I baked it anyway.

It smelled great. I could smell the beer. And since the batter tasted good, I assume the cake itself might be good too. Who knows? On March 31 I will be able to tell you. The recipe used a really yummy look frosting that I really wanted to make. But since this was only heading into my freezer and not to a friend as I had originally planned, I decided to just skip it. Yeah, the pics would have been really great with the frosting but I can't be too concerned about it.

After Lent, I will try this again. I'm sure there are great cakes elsewhere for you to drool over so hop on over to the other blogs and have a look.