The Bain of My Existence

God damn apple cake. This simple, easy recipe has consistently left me muttering 'fuck' under my breath for over 6 months now. It is the only recipe that when something goes wrong, which it always does, I cannot for the life of me figure out why. Remember why this would bother me?

Before I get too far into this rant, I will offer you the reader the happy, cheerful part of this recipe. Let me say that I love my apple peeler. It peels, cores, and slices the apples perfectly. It is easy to clean, cuts down the time for prepping apples to just a few minutes, and it makes these great apple peel spirals. On this occasion, our friend Brian who typically eats the spirals queried, "At what point is that trash?" I still have no answer and leave it up to you readers to decide.

 

Since there was company I didn't take many pictures of the process of making this cake. I assure you it is very simple. Mix wet ingredients together. Mix dry ingredients together. Mix the two together and add whatever chunks of stuff are being added; in this case, walnuts. With the dough mixed and chunks folded in, I spooned everything in as appropriate. First the batter, then a layer of apples. More batter, then more apples. I had some extra batter that I spread over the top. It wasn't much and so it didn't really affect the cake. I then put it into the oven and away it baked. It smelled delicious, which it usually does. Once it was finished, I took it out of the oven and it looked great, which it usually does. Here is my evidence:

Now doesn't that cake look swell? It's almost as though I should be able to just run a knife around the sides, flip it over and say "Gee, that sure is a good looking cake!" 

That never happens.

The 'always' in that first paragraph refers to the the very last step of the cake: the inversion. I have used tube pans and bunt pans, oil and butter, hot cake and cool cake, and no matter what I do this cake always splits in half. Always. Every single time this stubborn cake ends up looking like this:

God Damn It!! It always splits. No matter what I do. I cannot for the life of me figure out why. I've used more apples, then less apples. It split both times. I've used various pans, it always splits. My last and final guess is that I am putting too much dough on the top (when pouring it's the bottom) of the pan, making the bottom fall off. You would think that the weight of the top would make it all just flop right out considering the amount of non-stick business in play, but noooOOOOooo. 

What makes this even more frustrating is that I can't stop making it. I cannot erase this from my list of recipes, it just tastes too damn good. It's easy and extremely delicious. It's moist and sweet and flavorful and in all the right proportions. It just looks ugly and that is why I have renamed this from Apple Cake to "Ugly Cake." What can I say? It has a great personality. 

No stress though because the next day I got to be here:

Damn do I love my life.