No Ordinary Snack Cake

I'm not sure exactly what I made, and that is where it began. One gallon of milk and several packets of store-bought Yogourmet freeze-dried cheese starter later, I ended up with something that resembled yogurt in consistency but sour cream in flavor. I thought it was supposed to be cheese. Okay, so I didn't have it at the proper temperature during its developmental stages (a bit too cold). Yes, I know, I'm sure I didn't drain it enough; but I had already taken it away from the cheesecloth, and I simply didn't feel like putting it back. Well, that was silly.

In the ensuing willfulness, I found myself scouring the web for some sort of recipe requiring substantial quantities of sour cream (I decided that's what I had, and I had nearly 1 quart of it). Initially sour cream pound cake seemed like a natural choice, but I didn't have a loaf pan and dammit, I wasn't going to buy one (though I plan to within the next few days). What about cookies? That might be interesting, I don't think I've ever made cookies with sour cream.

Along the way I found a recipe for lemon mousse containing either yogurt or sour cream as one of the main ingredients. Hmm...before I had decided I had sour cream, I thought I might have had yogurt, so there we go. Next, I stumbled upon this delightful sour cream cake jammed full (in the best way) of lime curd. The sparks flew. Sour cream cupcakes filled with a lime curd-mousse combo and topped off with...I can't decide...sour cream icing? Would the lime mousse alone do? Bare naked, perhaps? I know...twinkies!

I was gifted a twinkie pan (actually a twinkie kit) sometime ago, and this was the perfect opportunity to use it. Little did I know that I was getting myself into something much bigger than a mere salute to the impregnable little snack cakes.

While I am positive that this recipe would have worked for me had I not made extraneous substitutions (my so-called-sour-cream instead of the real thing paired with a mini-mini loaf versus the prescribed 9X9 pan), these cakes resembled little rubber door stops. Oh goodness, there I go with these substitutions. This is the cook part of me that clashes horribly with the wannabe baker in me - you can't just do what you want in baking, there are recipes and chemistry involved, it's the melding of art and science. This lesson I'm not sure I'll ever learn.

So the mousse recipe, in my limited experience in mousse, seemed wrong in so many ways, but I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt; obviously it's worked for someone before. Now, here is where I should have just let my own judgment take over (nevermind the fact that I was once again making a substitution), but alas, I ended up with lime soup. It was tasty soup, but certainly not the beginnings of a cake filling by any stretch of the imagination. "I'll add gelatin," I thought. I was conservative with this one. (Nothing quite as unpleasant as too much gelatin in anything, really.) Oh, not enough. I'll add more. What the..?

I added twice what I had before. What happened to conservative? What am I doing? Making lime sealant, apparently - could've bounced a quarter off this mess. Hmmm...okay: warm it up (make it fluid again), whip some of the cream I have left, fold a small amount of the lime putty back in...and voila! Lime whipped cream mousse filling! This final incarnation was admittedly quite good, but the 1+ day of trail and error became comedic and downright annoying, though through it all, I refused to give up.

Meanwhile, I opted for sponge cakes courtesy of the recipe in the little booklet that came in the kit, as I was certain that my "sour cream" calamities were unstuffable. Amazing. They looked amazing. Proud mama I was, they looked just like the real thing. So why can't they be filled? Indeed, those atomic yellow submarines truly are cream filled air cakes, there would be no other explanation for how they can get that whipped sugary substance inside those things. Yes, I was forced to create the illusion of cream-filled goodness for the aesthetics of this piece.

Put your hands in the air, and back away from the twinkie.

Next time, I'll just let the cheese drain longer.