Week 6, September 26, 2010: Chocolate Cake

Chocolate Butter Cake with Chocolate frosting.  Recipe from joyofbaking.com

I found two basic chocolate cake recipes in my search on joyofbaking.com this week, so I decided to make them both.  Now, I was given some solid advice on two aspects of chocolate cake that I completely disregarded and lived to pay the consequences of.  First, I was told to add more liquid than required, because the cocoa soaks up a lot.  Second, I was told to butter and parchment the pan.  More on the consequences after the recap.

I love chocolate.  There are two reasons that the chocolate tree is called theobroma- the food of the gods. It's pretty much the best thing to eat on earth (I'll give it a tie with good cheese and Chilean reds) and just like the platypus, God or the gods or whoever created the species must have been laughing like the dickens.  Check out pictures, those trees are funky looking.

At the dos (my house) we have to hide chocolate bars to keep me out of them.  We stock a variety of unsweetened and bittersweet as well as light and dark dutch cocoa for baking.  I had to head out to find non-dutch for this weeks cakes- I still need to figure out what the real difference is in the processing.  Both recipes were quite simple.  The first only varied from the usual white cake method in adding cocoa and melted chocolate to the wet before mixing in the dry and (my favorite)- adding whole eggs, meaning no playing with my nemesis.  The second had no eggs and was a messy mix in the pan job.

The first cake mix was probably one of the best batters I've had.  Very chocolate mousse-esque.  The frosting for the first cake was melted chocolate, powdered sugar, milk and butter- it was supertasty, but could have used more chocolate.  The second frosting was your classic chocolate ganache.  I let it come to room temperature and tried to beat it to a lighter consistency.  I'll tell you about it after the faculty tries it out.

As for the tastiness of the first cake: I brought it to Nan's and she, my aunt and Mom tried it out first.  It was really good.  Both Mom and Dad loved the frosting.  The only thing to tweak that Dad noticed was that the cake was a bit dry.  This is where the extra liquid would have been helpful.

why when the recipe says use parchment, you do.

A few changes are occurring here this week:

After eating about half a cheesecake last week, I've made the executive decision that my butt cannot possibly take more than a slice of cake a week and attempt to get smaller.  So, I'm allowed a Sunday slice and leaving one aside for Lulu and the rest is going.

There will be a new addition to the family by next week's post- so I'll keep you in the know about that as Mom and Dad head out to welcome the little ficus.

And lastly, in memory of a dear friend:

My first kitchen purchase for the casa was a set of pot holders.  They were a nothing special red set that stood up well to heat for very short periods of time.  I set this guy down on a burner while making some pasta on Wednesday and didn't realize what I'd done until the awful smell of the burning neoprene led Lu to ask what was going on.  It was unsaveable.  RIP little oven mitt.  We'll miss you.