Mulligatawny (p. 136), High altitude classic 1-2-3-4 cake (p. 747), and Quick white icing (p. 793)

I am a few days behind and I have to blog about yesterday soon...

I love soup and I'm happy it's fall so that I can make fall-y things!

I made Mulligatawny (MGT) (p. 136) today. I don't know how many of you eat MGT, but it's one of my favorite Indian dishes, along with Kheer. But I've never made any Indian food, even though Jennifer (one of my great friends from high school who is married to an Indian man) tells me it's easy.

This was super easy. It only took about an hour from start to finish and made a hearty two servings as a main course. It was just creamy enough and the curry was awesome (I made it with yellow curry). The oddest part? There are apples in MGT. I had no idea about that, although they did give it a crisp taste.

A vague and blurry picture of the yellow, tasty soup:


****FULL DISCLOSURE***
I know that I have stated (numerous times) that I am doing this because I can't cook. That's true. But I am an excellent baker. In high school, friends used to ask for my cookies (specifically, my big cookie) for gifts. I send dozens and dozens of cookies out every Christmas. I bake and I bake well. That being said, I haven't mastered the high altitude yet and I'm sick of not baking...
**************************

I started this cake several days ago before noticing that I was out of eggs. It turns out that TJOC uses a TON of eggs so I ran out for the first time ever (I usually have plenty on hand). So I already had the flour mixture taken care of and the sugar measured, so I figured, this will be a breeze, I'll make cupcakes.

Where the hell are my cupcake tins? Oh! I have no idea. So I guess it will be a cake I'm making.

Let me remind you, I live at approximately 5,000 ft above sea level. Why does that matter? Because it screws up almost all cooking and I have had ZERO luck with baking so far. But, hey, TJOC has high altitude recipes, so how could I screw it up?

I have no idea, but I managed to screw up 1 of the 2 cakes. I would love to know how that happened considering they were both poured out of the same bowl and in the oven next to each other on the same shelf!

The good cake:


The bad cake (see the indentation in the middle?):


AAGGGHHH! Why does this happen? I'm just going to have to keep trying until I get it right.






I decide to ice my cake with quick white icing because I don't feel like digging out my candy thermometer.





This is where it starts to go downhill...Frankly, I think this is the funniest thing to happen to me so far in my journey of TJOC. I sifted and sifted--but for some reason, after about twenty minutes, I had 1/2 cup--and I needed 4 cups...so I just fluffed the powdered sugar and moved on. This wasn't a problem. What was the problem?


It looks good, doesn't it?

Well, TJOC calls for 4-6 TBSP of milk, sherry, rum, or coffee. I don't drink coffee, so that was a no go. I figured that milk would require me to refrigerate the cake, and I don't feel like doing that. So what do I use? I invited the Captain to the party. Yes, I put 6 TBSP of Captain Morgan rum in the frosting.

"So, do you want to taste the frosting" I asked Josh. Of course he did. "Um...it has a strange taste" was all he said..."does it taste like rum?" I asked. It did. I tasted it. I'm not confident I can take this to work...I'll smell like I have a flask in the desk. It tastes like someone poured rum into the cake, and of course, it isn't cooked off so there is plenty of alcohol still in it...

I'm not sure how much I want to eat my rum cake. I mean, I like rum cake normally, but this is a little much...

So I iced the cake and they are pretty...I guess we'll see...

I was going to give some of it to a co-worker because he gave me a whole bunch of garden tomatoes from his garden, but he doesn't drink, so I think this cake might be a no-no...