cakey cakiness

The rum cake, made in my tube pan (hence the vulgarly wide, goatse-looking asshole in the middle), came out perfectly. It smells great, and it looks just like the previous rum cakes I've made since acquiring the family rum-cake recipe from my brother David. The Death by Chocolate cake (quintuple chocolate, as it turns out), made in a more standard Bundt pan, doesn't look nearly as handsome after being coated with homemade Magic Shell, but I must say, the Magic Shell hardened immediately when it hit the refrigerated cake. I did the spoon-tap test to see how rock-solid the coating was, and it was pretty solid.

Thus arose a dilemma: with the chocolate cake now coated, I didn't want to re-wrap it in cling wrap and stick it back in the fridge. I also didn't want to stick the cake back in the fridge unwrapped, where it could absorb the ambient fridge smells or let off its own cake smell, which might permeate the fridge and end up in other foods. What to do? Mother Nature offered a solution: it's cooler these days, so why not let the cake sit outside my apartment door on the huge A/C compressor (one of many lining the hallways of this building) across my hallway? So that's what I've done. Here's hoping no thief comes along and steals the cake. 

Thieves might be a problem. I got a "delivered" announcement about powdered chocolate this past Saturday, but no confirmatory delivery photo. When I checked outside my door, there was nothing, and when I schlepped over to the elevator, there was also nothing. When I had set up my Coupang account, I had requested 문앞/mun-ap (front-door) delivery. Most of my Coupang packages arrive where they're supposed to; some lazy or rushed delivery people plop my packages down by the 14th-floor elevator and leave a texted note saying where to find the delivery. On very rare occasions, my packages are left at the first floor, watched over by the concierge. It's a pain in the ass to have to go down to the lobby when you're expecting the package to be delivered to your front door (first-world problems, I know). Anyway, I wrote to Coupang about the missing powder this morning and expect a reply within 24 hours.

Meanwhile, here are the cakes.

rum cake, bedecked (bedighted, as Max Miller might say) with almonds

Death by Chocolate, slathered in homemade Magic Shell

Homemade Magic Shell, a kind of quick-hardening ganache, is basically semisweet chocolate chips plus coconut oil. That's it. Coconut oil solidifies at room temperature, and the chocolate chips play along nicely. Use 1/3 cup coconut oil (about 75 g) per 1 cup of chocolate chips. Microwave on high in 30-second bursts, stirring thoroughly between bursts. Depending on your microwave, you need only about 90 seconds. I spooned the Magic Shell over the fridge-cooled cake, and while the shell ran down the sides a bit, it did harden up pretty fast. Why it's got that bizarre coloration, though, as if the oil had separated, I can't say; I'm not a chocolatier. And since I'm terrible with presentation when I cook anything, the overall effect of my laying on the Magic Shell is somewhere between candle wax and diarrhea. A lot of the ganache flowed over the plate and onto my table, where it too hardened quickly. I have since cleaned the table up, and the cake is sitting (last I checked) safely outside my door.

candle wax or diarrhea?

Here are both cakes together:

Before I leave for tonight's dinner, I'll pack up some cake slices for Charles and his better half, and I'll bring along two forks so we can do a semi-surreptitious taste test while we're at Five Guys. I've decided that this is the best way for me to get to Five Guys without angina: if I eat sample slices of cake now, the carbs will wreak havoc on my heart, and I'll have trouble negotiating the subway station's stairs and/or walking the few hundred meters down from the station exit to the restaurant. Upshot: Charles and I will find out, at the same time, whether the cakes are worth his while to take back with him. Most people—Westerners, anyway—generally love our family's rum cake, but as I've noted before, some Koreans (like my ex-coworker) think there's just too much rum in it. And I have no idea how even I will react to the taste, smell, and mouth-feel of the chocolate cake, which sits outside, daring me to have a bite. Oh, the suspense. Know how the French say "suspense"? Le suspense.