So, before continuing I should explain that I am rather fond of comic books…Okay, extremely fond. As such it seemed only natural that when I found a recipe for an ‘Easy Surprise Batman Cake’ that I should attempt it. I mean, it even has ‘easy’ in the title, how could it go wrong? And it also meant that I had an excuse to buy a Batman cookie cutter-although that was mainly to convince my mother- I required much less persuading to purchase it.
In all fairness, the recipe and method was in fact quite simple; make two cake mixtures one with black food colouring and the other a simple lemon sponge, cook the batman sponge first, use a cutter to cut out batman shapes and place them surrounded by the raw lemon mixture and bake for about 25 minutes. (See original recipe here)
However as I am stubborn and stuck in my ways, I chose to ignore the recommended cake batter recipe (I’m sorry but I do not believe that heavy whipping cream belongs in a cake) and use my traditional Victoria sponge recipe and make a chocolate batman and an orange sponge.
In my haste to bake I may have forgoed a few of the steps in the recipe, such as freezing the batman shapes for 30 minutes to give them a better chance of keeping their shape during the second cooking, but given this the results were not too bad. Slightly too browned on the outside and too soft on the inside, with a somewhat squashed Batman logo. Hence I decided to name my creation my ‘Surprise Fatman Cake!’.
So for anyone interested in making their own ‘Surprise Batman Cake’ I would highly recommend you try it. Although it requires specialist tools- not everyone has a Batman cookie cutter in their baking arsenal- you could do it in any shape you desire. My advice would be to realise that it is actually quite time consuming, you have to make two separate cakes, wait for them to cool and I think freezing them would probably help with making the final result look a little more ‘Instagram-worthy’.
Ultimately, I think the errors were due to my oven being too hot; cooking the outside of the cake far too quickly in comparison to the inside. As the cake was actually quite nice and fluffy- and most importantly edible, I deem this attempt to be a mere mishap rather than a disaster with a 2 star disaster rating.
Despite it’s outward appearance, it passed the taste test with flying colours- and I will be attempting this again.
Michelin Disaster Rating: *****
Michelin Star Disasters 