Sunday, January 09, 2011

Philosophy's Vanilla Birthday Cake Recipe: Fact or Fiction?


Let me start off by saying that yesterday was my Friday, as in I work Tuesdays - Saturdays, and thus, yesterday was my Friday. I came home exhausted from the week's work (and 32 degree weather outside), and decided I wanted to take a nice, long, hot, relaxing bath. I had my eye on a bottle of Moscato that had been taking space up in my fridge the entire week. 

I was gifted Philosophy's Birthday Girl birthday pack this past October for my birthday, and I love Philosophy products, so I reached for my Vanilla Birthday Cake shower/bath/shampoo gel, turned on the old standards, grabbed a giant glass of wine and sunk into a nice hot bath. Two glasses of wine and an hour later I started thinking. Are the recipes on the Philosophy bottles real? 

I woke up this morning with a plan, a philosophical plan to be exact. 
The question remained, Philosophy recipes, fact or fiction? 

*Let me just say I followed the recipe to a "T":

Combine three cups of flour and a 1/2 teaspoon of salt in a bowl.

Mix well and set aside.

In a mixing bowl combine 1/2 a cup pf  melted butter, 1/2 a cup of melted margarine and 1/4 cup of vegetable oil. Mix well with a whisk for 30 seconds.

Add in 3 cups of sugar.

Mix well until mixture gets creamy.

Add in one large egg.

Beat into mixture for one minute then repeat this process with four more eggs. 
You will be using a total of 5 eggs. 

The end result should look something like this.

Add in one tablespoon of vanilla and one tablespoon of butter flavoring.

*I have never used "butter flavoring" and I didn't feel like going to the store so I just added another tablespoon of margarine. This is the only time I strayed from the recipe on the bottle.

Add in a 1/2 cup of evaporated milk. Mix all ingredients together well.

Add the flour mixture to the mixing bowl and beat until all ingredients are combined well and lumps disappear.

Grease a baking dish, I used an 8 inch square.

Bake a 325 degrees, and per the instructions, for an hour and half.

After an hour and a half when I inserted a toothpick into my cake it still came out sticky. I ended up baking my cake for almost two hours. But in the end it did come out. 

So, Philosophy recipes? FACT. The cake is crispy on the outside, soft and uber moist on the inside. It does have a nice vanilla flavor, but does it remind me of birthday cake? Not really. Maybe it will remind someone else of one. It is however, a vanilla cake. 

Anyone else try any Philosophy recipes? 
I'm dying to hear how the other recipes come out?

6 comments:

  1. Oh and not to put Philosophy down, I mentioned before I LOVE Philosophy, but I don't think I conveyed this in the post. The cake was good, not great, there are better recipes out there.

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  2. I've made the Fresh Peaches with Cream as well as the Mangos and Cream. I just made the Papaya Passion Punch and they all have turned out quite tasty :)

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  3. Interesting... I may have to try some others.

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  4. I think Philosophy left out leavening. The recipe needs a teaspoon baking powder. You'd also need a larger pan than 8x8 for a leavened cake.

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  6. I attempted this recipe, I added 1 TSP of baking powder to this recipe and I didn't use butter flavouring as I've never heard of this, I converted 325f to 140 fan assisted oven, I also split the batter mix into 2, which I'm glad I did otherwise it would out spilt over the top of the largest cake tin I have which is 10 inches diameter, the first layer I put in the oven for an hour at 160 then 180 because it was still wet inside the cake, I took the first layer out after an hour when it was ready and because of the length of time it had to be in the oven the outside was hard and I'd say burnt, so my second attempt on next layer I cooked it at 180 for 59 mins in total. This recipe isn't good and I won't be doing it again. Waste of time and rubbish instructions. Not worth the time, don't attempt, there's plenty of good birthday cake recipes out there, I wanted to try this one to see if it worked and unfortunately it didn't.

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