Timeline
8 pm: Though the recipe told me to pre-heat the oven as the first step, I knew myself better and instead, went to the second step--lining my cake pan with parchment paper, which I'd never used before and which was sort of fun, in the Martha-Stewart sense of the word.
8:15 pm: After zesting two oranges (I used cara cara because I think they're prettier), I had to slice them down/ get rid of all the pith. Another first for me.
8:40 pm: I was a little nervous about the caramel sauce since I'd never done that before either and the recipe called for a pastry brush to brush down the sides of the saucepan, but i just used a spoon, which seemed to work fine for me?
8:40-9:30 pm: I really don't recommend grinding almonds without a food processor unless you're A. fine with breaking into a sweat while baking or B. you enjoy manual labor. At first, I put them in a ziploc bag and beat them with a rolling pin, but my right arm started to cramp up on me. So then I started chopping...
MIDNIGHT: So I don't have a picture of the mixing process, but beating sugar and butter without an electric mixer is also tough and when I had finally finished adding the flour mixture, I had made a huge mess, which I probably freaked out about and had to clean/ couldn't even pause to take a picture. Anyway, this cake baked for an hour and I pulled it out promptly at midnight. It smelled delicious...
All I had left was one last, potentially disastrous step: to flip it over...
TA DA!
It doesn't look as golden and glistening as Gourmet's, but I think I needed this post-peppermint cake. And all the self-esteem I gained, I promise, will go straight into tackling another cover recipe. Like maybe this one.
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