Brown Butter Pound Cake

Saturday was an interesting day for me. I was on my own and no appointments or other activities planned. So cooking was the name of the game for the day. I had earlier in the week been reading up on a few recipes for bread and cakes. All sounding straight forward and simple enough to do. Just follow the recipes...
It was my Saturday and I decided it would be a cake day. First step go and buy all the ingredients and a small hand held food mixer. Can you believe it I do not even own a small mixer or a bread tin. And I still want to cook. So off I went to Index and to several other shops in search for the ideal machine.... Well given the fact that it was my first such machine and taking into account my limited ('non existent') skills as a pastry chef I decided to be prudent and go initially for a cheap thing that could one day be replaced once I had reached a level of producing something that resembled a cake. Only then could I justify the higher spending on such equipment.
The choice at the low end of the market was very limited but I did end up with something that worked satisfactorily. Prices varied from Baht 590 to 4,000, that's about US$ 20 to 130. I settled for the 20US$...
Deciding on which cake was also an issue. I have for some time when on the Internet logged onto Cooking and have followed a few of the recipes. Their recipe of the week for this week was Brown butter Pound Cake. I took this as a sign... And the photo shown here is off the web site. Looks good.Looked very good to me and reading the recipe it looked simple enough even for me to make.

So this was it, Saturday to myself and all the time in the world to try some baking. Put all this academic research from reading recipes on the Internet into practice. Clear the work top I'm coming through!!!!

I should tell you I do not own a 'proper' oven but a full combination microwave with a grill and convection oven all combined. I plan to use oven. So in case things don't work out as planned this oven will be first excuse, second excuse ... this is my initial attempt, so beginners luck maybe but... and the third excuse... I don't even want to think about it. A bad workman always blames his tools.

I checked all the ingredients and set out the cooking gear. Even had remembered to buy a baking tin.... All check out 100% OK.

Into the recipe and made the mix. and it tasted good as I tried a finger dip of the mix. Defiantly I could sense this was my calling. Lots of talent. Might even go for Master Chief on the BBC. I'll check out how to apply for the competition. Imagine me on TV showing others how to cook. 1 hour later things had changed. My esteem had dropped over the period as I had spent an hour trying to sort out the difference between Centigrade and Fahrenheit adn checking which one was displayed on the over. Then after all that I realised I had the grill o,n in the microwave oven instead of the convection. Not the result I had planned.

I think BBC will have to wait till next year.....I'll just put it down to experience and I'm sure to do better next time.