Boston Cream Pie Disaster

I don’t even know where to begin.

Let’s start with my baking confidence… it’s pretty much at an all-time low right about now.  And that is not a good thing.  This dish caused not one, not two, but three baking mishaps.  I think that’s a new record for me.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s go back to the beginning.

My heart was in the right place.  My folks were coming over to watch the boys (date night!) and I wanted to make my dad his favorite dessert for a belated birthday present.  He adores Boston Cream Pie, so I thought, why not?

I started out making the actual cakes.  I found a recipe through google (Note to self: not a good plan, unless I know the cook or it’s rated highly.  Lesson learned.  Lesson whacked up side my head.  Lesson shoved down my throat.)

(Anyways, I won’t be sharing the recipe or any of the others, as I do not recommend them.) 

So, I mixed up the batter, added it to my wax-lined cake pans (as suggested), and placed them in the oven to bake.  I checked on them about 5 minutes early, and my toothpick came back clean.  I took the pans out and set them aside to cool.

Ahhh, back when I was still optimistic...

After the cooled, I went to take them out.  And, instead of two soft, spongy, light cakes, I had two hard, crispy, cookie-like disks.  If that wasn’t frustrating enough, the wax paper had melted to the bottom of the cakes.  Awesome.

Boston Cream Pie Gods: 1,  Courtney: 0

You would think this would’ve been a sign to stop.  But nowadays, I’m a fighter in the kitchen.  I wasn’t going to give up so easily.  And I figured my dad would really know it was my cooking, with a crispy cake instead of the soft one.

And so, I moved on to the custard.  And stupid me, I decided to work on while I was cooking my Tuscan dinner.  Not the brightest move.

I cooked my custard according to the recipe I found – from the same place as the cakes.  What was I thinking??  When I went to add my egg yolks…they, um, kinda cooked a bit…

Can you see the little flecks of cooked egg yolk?

And yet still, I forged on.  I placed the custard into fridge to cool. 

After it cooled, I went to dump it on one of the cakes.  And it came out… in one BIG lump of gelatinous goop.  I could’ve cut it with a knife and served it in slices, I swear.

Boston Cream Pie Gods: 2,  Courtney: 0

This is the point where I might have cried a little bit.  I was overly stressed from the dinner cooking, the cake issues, and now this custard lump.

Hubby was so supportive, after he got over being amused at my issues (yes, he did laugh at me, but in doing so, he helped me learn to laugh at myself).  He took out his tried and true Boston Cream Pie recipe and said he’d help me re-make the whole thing.

I was kind of over it at this point, so he basically did all the work for the cake and custard.  I was ready, though, to step up for the chocolate topping.

I thought for sure, with the already-tested and trusted recipe, nothing could go wrong.  And I could still at least tell my dad that I helped make his cake, even if it was just the topping.

So, I followed the recipe exactly.  Word-for-word. 

And my shaved chocolate pieces would not melt.  They just sat in the pan in little clumps.  I did not take a picture because I was not a happy camper.  At all.

Boston Cream Pie Gods: 3, Courtney: 0

Thank goodness Hubs was around, because he knew some tricks to fix it and make it work.  And he did.

So we had a cake to give to my dad…but here’s the last hilarious part…

It slid apart before serving.

Seriously, at this point, all we could do was just laugh.

And dig in. 

At least it still tasted good!