Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake

We have very little counter space you see, and between the coffee maker and the dishes drying there was just no room for a cooling cake.  I placed the cake on a rack on the TV stand and went about my day.  We leave food out all the time and our dog never sniffs twice.  The cake was fine from it's low perch as we sliced little pieces off here and there, it's glaze dripped to the wood beneath it.

The next morning, thinking nothing of it, I brought Shane to the train station.  It's a six minute round trip journey.  When I came back into the house Butter slunk down onto his mat (the place we put him for discipline) licking his chops.  He knew he was in trouble before I knew what he did.  I looked around for vomit before I spotted the scene.  My pretty cake completely devoid of icing, mashed up against the TV with a picture frame sitting on top (he had pushed the whole thing back into it) and a good third of the cake missing.  I don't know what pushed him to eat the cake, I've never known him to eat my sweets.  (Corn thief he most definitely is.)  But this is his game, once every few months, after we've forgotten about a previous incident he'll strike again.  We'll up our vigilance for a few weeks before letting our guard drop again.  We forget, he attacks.  Needless to say the slobbery cake went straight to the garbage.

Luckily for me I didn't find the cake all that enjoyable anyways.  It thought it was bland and tough.  The only part I really enjoyed was the sugar craving it satiated.  Shane on the other hand liked it a lot, so I'll leave it for you to decide.

Baking notes:
-Even though I lowered the oven temperature to 325 and had the cake in for only an hour (instead of 68 minutes) I found it hard and dry.  I needed less time, but even then I'm not sure the very thick and hard crust on the outer edge would be better.
-I had to tent the cake for the last 25 minutes of baking because it was getting so dark.
-The cake itself had little flavour, it could have used a nice splash of vanilla or something.
-When I combined the icing sugar and sour cream I couldn't figure out how they were going to make something liquid, but I just kept stirring and oddly enough it eventually worked.
-I did love the walnut topping and could have eaten it all off the top (like my dog).

35/569

The recipe for Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake can be found on the epicurious website.