I had four and a half hours before I had to get the kids to school. Surely plenty of time to get a cake baked and to be sitting cooling on the bench for when I got back, right?

Er, no.

It seems by getting up at 4.30am it gives you an increased sense of time security, that clearly wasn’t there. After jamming 21 ‘to do’ things into those morning hours, I simply ran out of time.

With time tick-tocking, the school bell never late and the cake clearly still not done. I decided I would have to leave it in the oven, turned off, but hoped the stoves residual heat would cook through any last of the gooey crumb. It had been baking for an extra 5-10 minutes already*, so surely that should be enough?

I get home hours later and enthusiastically reach into my oven to retrieve the cake and start icing it.

Not quite what I expected.

Not really what I expected at all. Sunk like I hadn’t sunk a cake since 1994.** Hmmm, what to do? The cake being still far from cooked through on the bottom, I decided to bake it again and see what would happen.

It seems cake miracles do happen, and it did get a little more height (than the mess pictured.) It was still sunken in the middle though, so what to do about that?

I was going to ice that cake, like I’d never iced before, that’s what I was going to do!

Covering the cakey crater with a vanilla mascarpone mixture***, I then carefully smoothed the tiny bit left over to the edges and sprinkled walnuts on for extra hiding of any problems.

Verdict?

Best cake I’d made in ages. Seriously, I wish all mistakes tasted that good.

Carrot and Cardamom Cake recipe can be found here, (coming from the new cook book The New Nordic.) *

The photo actually made it look taller than it was, a total height of 2cms on the sunken gooey bottom. ** I found the 200C too hot for my cake, use your judgement, and remember recipes are a guide, you know your oven best.

It also needed far longer than stated, but…I shouldn’t haven’t been squishing so many things into the morning. ***

The cream cheese and butter icing as stated in the recipe was substituted for a Vanilla Mascarpone number which is more the way our family roll.