Root Beer Bundt Cake: FAIL

Frickin-a.

I had a kitchen failure today. A deceiving kitchen failure. A kitchen failure that successfully hid itself from me for hours.

A few weeks ago, I had a chocolate root beer cake with root beer ice cream at Lucia’s Wine Bar that was so delicious. And it’s been on my mind for a few weeks now.

I’ve been doing some research online about chocolate root beer cakes, found a few recipes, and decided to place my bets on the Root Beer Bundt Cake recipe in Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. This required a cookbook purchase. But with my B&N discount card and a $10 gift card, I decided it didn’t really even count as a cookbook purchase.

Somehow along the way this morning as I was pulling out the ingredients, I became mesmerized by the root beer bottles themselves and propped them all over the house so I could take photos of them.

After this slight distraction passed, I did everything right. I took the time to spoon the flour into the measuring cup gingerly, take a knife, and level it off like you’re supposed to. I very carefully greased every nook and cranny of my Bundt pan. I was making this cake a day before I needed it (to take to a friends’ house for dinner tomorrow night) because the recipe said the flavors develop nicely if made a day in advance. I set myself up for success, I swear.

“Until a small sharp knife inserted into the cake comes out clean” said the recipe. Yep, followed this instruction.

Still…fail.

The saddest part about this whole experience was that I didn’t realize I ended up with a  cake that was truly not completely cooked until I was releasing it from the pan hours later after it had cooled. Turns out the part of the cake that is right next to the hole in the pan takes longer to cook than the rest of the cake. Who knew?

I didn’t even get to the root beer fudge frosting, which sounded quite tasty with its stick of unsalted butter, dark chocolate, salt, root beer, cocoa, and confectioners’ sugar…

I didn’t even get to put the finished, frosted cake into my Bundt cake traveler…