Armed with my trusty whisk and a can-do attitude, I got to work. I measured the flour, sifted the cocoa powder, and even managed to preheat the oven without setting off the smoke alarm (a personal best!). Things were going swimmingly… until I reached for the eggs. Now, I consider myself a fairly coordinated individual, but for some inexplicable reason, cracking eggs has always been my Achilles’ heel.

I tapped the first egg against the side of the bowl, a little too enthusiastically perhaps, and ended up with a mosaic of eggshell shards in my batter. “No problem,” I thought, “I’ll just fish them out.” Easier said than done. After several minutes of frantic fishing, I admitted defeat. The batter was officially casualty number one.

Did My Cake Become a Soufflé?

Determined not to let a few (okay, maybe more than a few) eggshells deter me, I whipped up a fresh batch of batter, this time with slightly less aggressive egg-cracking techniques. I carefully poured the batter into my meticulously greased and floured cake pan and popped it into the oven. So far, so good. Or so I thought.

As I peered through the oven door, a sense of dread washed over me. My once-proud cake had deflated faster than a punctured bouncy castle. Instead of a towering masterpiece, I was left with a dense, sunken pancake-like… thing.