A sheet cake in the freezer is one of my go-to ways of preserving cherries.

The first one rose nicely and seemed done, but when I took out out of the oven and let it cool for a moment, it collapsed completely. I tried cutting it, and it was like wet gloop. Not at all done. In fact it was so bad that I was going to throw it out without even taking a photo. I can’t recall ever having failed so badly with a cake – and with a familiar recipe, to boot!

Well, that’s a whole lot of fruit wasted. I guess I’ll make another attempt, then, and bake it for longer.

The second cake came out the way it’s supposed to. More or less – the surface has larger pores than some previous versions, for some reason.

I then had the idea of putting the first one back in the oven again. The oven was already hot, the cake was right there, I had nothing to lose. It wouldn’t bake properly, but maybe I could get something biscuit-like out of it? It would be dense and probably dry, but maybe I could use it for some kind of dessert at least.

I was entirely shocked to see the cake start rising again in the oven. I didn’t even think that was possible. The bubbles are supposed to be gone, the baking powder had its one chance. But no – the cake rose, and if I didn’t know its history, I would probably not have guessed that there was anything wrong with it. When I took it out again, it behaved perfectly normally.

It looks a mess, there are odd crater-like rings around the cherries, and the texture is not as even. But it is totally and absolutely a fully decent sheet cake. B-tier quality, but far from garbage.