It’s a cake…but it’s an omelet…but…

As I was perusing some recipes, trying to decide what to concoct today, I came across a recipe on the Sons of Norway website for Almond or Nut Cake. Since I’m still trying to rediscover my culinary heritage or whatever I figured this would be a point in my favor. I was intrigued by the ingredients list: eggs, baking powder, sugar and almonds. That’s it. I’d never seen a cake recipe that looked like that before so I had to see if this would really work. What do they say about curosity and the cat?

The first problem was that I didn’t have enough almonds. I only had half the almond called for in the recipe. But I still wanted to try it so I halved the recipe. Maybe not always a good option. Second, I don’t have a springform pan so I figured this small casserole dish I have would do the trick. I began beating together the eggs and sugar, going after the elusive “until light” consistency called for by the recipe.

Light? Exactly what does light mean? I know what stiff peaks are. But light? Maybe one person’s light is different from anothers. Hmm. So I beat the eggs and sugar until my arm felt like it was going to fall off, folded in the pulverized almonds and dumped it in the pan.

A few minutes into the cooking time I had a bad feeling. The bad feeling got worse when I started to smell scrambled eggs. Ack! When I pulled that “cake” out of the oven and turned it out onto a plate, this is what it looked like:

Clearly, I had not beaten the eggs enough. Maybe halfing the recipe wasn’t such a hot idea, either. The egg had settled to the bottom and made itself into a nice, sugary omelet. The nuts rose to the top. This is the grossest thing I’ve produced in a long time. 

On the plus side, I made thyme bread today based on Mom’s suggestion and it is every bit as good as the rosemary bread. Maybe even better. I spread some cream cheese on it and was in afternoon coffee break heaven!