Life in Gangneung 강릉 Life in Korea 한국

Chocolate Waterfalls

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  (the remnants from the quick cleanup)

Today I have to fulfill my promise of giving a treat to the kids who did their 추석 homework.  (추석 Chuseok is a Korean Holiday with similarities to Thanksgiving.) My promise was food.

So my mind thought what can I make that they haven’t seen yet???

Cake! A chocolate cake! Decorated with a lovely coffee buttercream frosting ~ yum!

I don’t care if they don’t like coffee, I do. And if there are leftovers I am eating it.

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Which leads me to some challenges unique to being in a foreign country. Buttermilk. There is no buttermilk. Buttermilk is what makes cake soft , fluffy, and moist. The reasons why cake just happens to be so delicious!

So I found online that you can add vinegar to milk and it can be substituted for buttermilk. Mind you it said white vinegar. I went to the biggest store in my area. No white vinegar. There is apple cider vinegar. Some form of vinegar from wheat. Pear vinegar. Drinking vinegar. But there is no white vinegar. Apple vinegar it is.  (I have since ordered dry buttermilk from iherb.)

So my dilemma came to how do I make cake for 25 students? I have one cake pan, muffin pan and large cookie trays that are kind of weird by my standards. The sides are about an inch and a half tall. So why not put the batter in that?

Because batter is deceiving. It’s a deceiving little bitch. I thought my poor cake looked like it wouldn’t even reach half the pan it was only a quarter of the way filled with batter. So like any normal person who doesn’t want a slim piece of cake…I doubled the recipe.

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Utter brilliance in my opinion! Brilliance! I pop it into the oven and change in to my pajamas.

I come back out to check on my cake and realize I have chocolate waterfalls coming out of my oven. OMG! Chocolate waterfalls are coming out of my oven! My precious resources! I must save the batter – bowl and ladle to the rescue!

Only idiots sit and scoop batter off the door of their oven and out of the baking tray to realize the potential in cupcakes. Why waste such delicious batter??

I might have looked strange to an onlooker inwardly panicking and hurrying to save what I could. But one cake and 18 cupcakes later. I’m a winner.

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