Disappointment, and a little beam of hope

Well, it looked beautiful going in. And it smelled delightful. And it looked great coming out of the oven.

But this is what came out of the bundt pan. It stuck, despite vigorous pre-batter-introduction greasing and such. I ended up having to cut it into quarters, and carefully pried each quarter out. Unfortunately, each quarter then crumbled a bit more. No, it isn't too dry. And it does taste as wonderfully as it smelled. But it looks a fright...

Here is a better shot of the texture, which is rather nice, actually. Not too dry, not too moist You can see the nuts somewhat scattered throughout the cake, not sitting all on the 'bottom'. Or, rather, the top. But this cake is not potluck worthy in its current state...

So, since I am not going to waste cake (and, since we have some good friends/neighbors/fellow parishoners coming by this evening to help us eat it, lol), I am going to turn it into a punchbowl cake, with the addition of some brandied vanilla pudding, and some homemade whipped cream. Or maybe, vanilla pudding and some brandied whipped cream. Hmmm. That sounds good. I may add a little extra...something..to the pudding, to keep it from tasting so packaged, though.

I will post pictures of the next rendition of this cake a bit later--our friends aren't scheduled to be over until around 5 this evening, so I've got a bit of time.

Now, what do I think the problem was with this cake? Well, I'm not 100% sure. I went with the poster's recommendations, as far as the oil/baking powder, etc. I also floured the crushed up pecans. But I don't think that any one of those had anything to do with the failure. I think that using a less intricately carved bundt pan (I went with my "cathedral' pan, instead of going simple) would have helped immensely. Next time, I'll grease and flour the thing, just to be on the safe side. And then I'll see. Cause I did everything else right, and no one else reported having this difficulty. So it must be something I did. If you have any ideas, let me know, cause if it wasn't something like one of the above two ideas, then I'm just out of luck on this one.

Regardless, I hope that your day isn't falling apart the way that this cake did (difficult to get going, falling apart once you do, at least the cake is still salvagable!). Have a great weekend, and I'll hopefully see you here later!