Cake Hunt

The procedure yesterday went well. In fact, much better than I anticipated. Truly, after the glorious experience of 'prepping' my bowel, anything short of a fire ant infestation would have been pleasant. That said, the combo of fentanyl + versed really did result in an experience free of any discomfort. I don't remember much of the time immediately after the procedure, but apparently I become a petty thief on amnesia-inducing medications. Today I discovered five magazines from the recovery room stuffed in my purse. Jesse stayed home all day to help wrangle children so I could rest. If only I'd realized I had a lot of celebrity gossip to catch up on.

Today I've been trying to finish up Miles's birth video in honor of his birthday tomorrow. I've also been in search of a good eggless chocolate cake recipe for him. Zoe's soy and peanut allergy haven't compromised my baking too much, but going eggless really alters the very foundation of my usual recipes.

A quick search for "eggless chocolate cake" yields lots of options, but I cannot say that I'm the most adventurous baker in this kind of circumstance. Would I feel comfortable picking a recipe at random from someone's blog, and making it the day of his birthday? With no practice run? Probably not. So I turn to the old standby, allrecipes.com. At least here, recipes go through an approval process and you see lots of comments and ratings. I can say from experience, however, that you can't always take the ratings at face value. Take for example this rating and review on an Eggless Chocolate Cake recipe:

I decided to experiment a little with this recipe. I...used applesauce, whole wheat flour, and Splenda... I omitted the cocoa powder and substituted an extra cup of Splenda. I used 1 TBS almond extract in place of the 3 TBS vanilla extract. The cake was done in about 45 min. I let it cool, and then turned it into a Jell-o poke cake by using a fork to poke holes 1/2-inch apart all over the cake. I then dissolved one large pkg. of sugar-free black cherry Jell-o in 2 cups of boiling water. I poured over the cake and refrigerated for 3 hours. Anyone with complaints of the cake not being moist can do this and it turns out GREAT.

Seriously? So, is your 5 star rating for the Eggless Chocolate Cake, or for your "2 Cups of Splenda No Chocolate Applesauce Almond Black Cherry Jell-O Cake"?

Sigh. The search continues...