Crock-Pot Chocolate Cake Fail

Let me just begin by stating that I think there is a reason Cake Boss and other cake baking professionals don't bake their cakes in Crock-pots. I'm not including the recipe here, because I can't really say, "Hey, you gotta try this!" But if you are a masochist, email me and I'll email the recipe to you.

I followed this Crock Pot Cake Recipe from the (normally reliable) Fix It and Forget It Cookbook. This cookbook has a lot of great recipes for soups, stews and such. I've had a lot of successes. After today's experience, I (think) I've finally come to the conclusion that I won't be attempting to make any more desserts in a Crock Pot.

Here's how it looks while it's still IN the Crock Pot. Kind of messy - it bubbled up to the lid,

then reduced down, leaving the lovely sludge.

Disaster struck when I decided to turn the cake over. Silly me, I thought it might actually look good. Problem was, there's a chocolate sauce that settled to the bottom of the Crock Pot (evidently it's supposed to do that - create its own sauce, although this is not explained in the recipe). The chocolate sauce was very hot. I narrowly dodged being scalded.

This took 5 paper towels to clean up. It would have taken 15 or 20 paper towels, but 5 towels were all I had. That's a fail within a fail -- had to look for a bath towel that was dark colored to mop the rest of it up. I didn't want to stain yellow bath towels with chocolate and have to answer

questions about my towels for decades after this.

Here it is turned out onto the plate. Made the mistake of having my daughter take a photo with her cell phone camera. I didn't take the photo myself because -- well, I had chocolate sauce all over my hands. You hear a lot about how much cell phone cameras have improved, but this is proof they really haven't. In any case, bad photo or not, it looks like a steaming cow pie.

Here is a clearer shot to show the texture. The cake is made with primarily brown sugar, unsweetened cocoa power, and flour. It would have been better with the sauce dripping down over it. This would be "Okay" if we had vanilla ice cream to put on top. It's not quite cake, it's not quite brownie. It's like some odd in-between foodstuff. But one thing I can say for sure -- it should never, under any circumstances turn the cake over!

Final Verdict: It was pretty simple to make, but not really delicious enough for the bother. Definitely NOT a recipe for a beginning cook, because when everyone laughs and points at you (as they did at me) it will make you never want to cook or bake anything ever again. But I know it's not my fault (other than the turning over, but that it has sauce at the very bottom should really be explained in the recipe). I followed the directions to the letter. It has somewhat of an aftertaste from the large amount of brown sugar in it.