Pat a cake pat a cake baker's man

Bake me a cake as fast as you can.

No I am not learning this rhyme for Chiyaa. This is something that just came into my mind after my very first baking experience. 

Let me start from the beginning. I have always envied people who can bake.My mom makes the most amazing cakes and cookies, but I never ever gave her much bhaw except for licking the container in which she makes the dough. I loveeeeeeeeeee that raw batter :). I always wished I could bake or rather gather the courage to bake. K's manager's wife whetted my desire for the same. Shes mastered the art of baking. She can whip a cake or a batch of cookies in a jiffy. She encouraged me by saying, the only thing is gathering the ingredients. Else baking is sooooooooo easy. Sounds so promising. Then I have posts like this (Deeps) and this (Shalom) which make the option even more alluring. 

So I always toyed with the idea of baking - like one toys with the idea of joining a gym, a yoga class, buying salad vegetables or reading an autobiography. (Yes these are all ideas I toy with :D ) Baking had the added de-merit of - yes you guessed it - eating. (Oh you could'nt guess it?) Well.. K is not a cakes person. Neither am I unless I am in the confectionery section when I am literally like a bull in a china shop (errr.... just shopping ). But like Dr. Jekyll K does turn into a cake person when he enters Nando's.  The vegetarian in him turns into a proper tangdi chicken fan too. But we should nt bother too much with that. So where was I, K and cakes. Yes - he simply loves the chocolate cheese cake there. The cake looks stunning, tastes amazing. K forgets me, the baby, the world, his hair, and most of all, his bulging beer belly when he merely thinks about it. Anyday he would elope with the cake for a better life. 

Ok now that I have posted a pic of the ahem 'other'. I thought I would sneak the way into K's heart again through a - yes - cheesecake. But cake = bake which scares the living day lights out of yours truly. So I chanced upon this "No bake chocolate cheesecake". Cake and that too no bake - woo hoo. It was like puri kayanat conspiring to get me to make a cake. Still I took close to 3 weeks to summon the actual COURAGE to get the ingredients! I think I make this much effort to venture into a room with a lizard in it. So finally last  Saturday, I took 45 minutes browsing through the various aisles in the super market to get all the stuff for the would be delicious cheese cake.

Sunday evening was the good muhurat to start on the shubh karya. I enlisted the services of K as well. Now I do not have a blender, a mixer, a baking tray - no nothing. K broke the biscuits with bare brute force. I beat the cream cheese with the manual beater all the time thinking  - toned arms toned arms. And lo and behold I was able to beat it into the 'soft peaks' state. All preps done and the cake loaded, it was time to freeze it for an hour. After an hour, the chocolate seemed soft still so I thought well, let it freeze some more. In the meanwhile I took the opportunity to tell everyone - my mom, my friend in Blore, who ever I saw online on fb - I AM  BAKING A CAKE. Some more time ended up being over night (yes I forgot to take it out) I dreamt that the whole cheese cake was frozen and I kept it for thawing and ended up having something like a cheese cake rasmalai. I woke with a fright and took the cake from the freezer and put it in the fridge (the next step). I waited as much as my impatient self could allow me before nudging the knife into the heart of the cake.

The results are presented below.

The plate has only the chocolate part. The over night freezing did unmentionable things to the base so much that it parted ways with the top. In spite of my gorilla type efforts, I could not make them come together. Its chocolate cheese cake - no one mentioned the importance of the base. :( 

After repeated and persistent hammering I was able to make some portion of the base nudge out - and this what the wreckage looks like. 

Soooooooo after thisssssssssss utter disaster I intend to make microwave cookies next. Till then any ideas to salvage the cake? Else anyone game for some digestive biscuits with cheese and dark chocolate? :(