Chocolate Chocolate Cake - Mike's Birthday

Brad loves chocolate cake.. boxed chocolate cake, topped with the chocolate frosting you buy in a jar. He prefers Duncan Hines to anything (although he wouldn't be able to tell you that, I learned through trial and error). So when he gifted me a stand mixer, I made it my personal mission to find a chocolate cake and frosting recipe that would taste like boxed but be homemade (and therefore more healthy). FAIL FAIL FAIL!!! Cake disasters ensued. He wouldn't eat anything I made him. It was very sad to have to give away so much cake, or stuff my face with it out of misery. He tried to stay nice but he's pretty fierce when it comes to his midwestern palate.

Slowly but surely I found the right cake recipe. I actually got it on recipezaar.com. Brad loved it, saying "the bread part is good..." and you can guess what's next... "but the frosting is disgusting!" I had to top it with the frosting from the jar if I was going to get him to eat any. Frosting recipe after frosting recipe I continued to lose against his taste buds. So one day I googled "duncan hines chocolate frosting recipe." It pulled up your average chocolate buttercream frosting, but somehow looked more promising with all the reviews. I tried it atop my chocolate cake, and believe it or not, BRAD ATE IT! He still claims it isn't good, but "edible." I mean, there are several edible things I don't wolf down the way he eats this cake.. like grapefruit, shrimp heads, underwear... so it must be pretty good!
Last month when I visited Willful in New Mexico, I shared my choco cake recipe with her. We made adjustments for high altitude and they came out only slightly cavey. Then I guess she made some of her own the other week, and they were absolutely cavernous! I was so sad because I felt like my recipe set her up for failure.
Then it was Mike's birthday last weekend, and he requested my chocolate cake, having sampled it the last time I made it. He'd been waiting a month for this cake; he honestly loved it and said it was the best chocolate cake he'd ever had and couldn't wait to have it again.
I prepared everything as usual, put the cakes in the oven, and halfway through spied on them. Hmm... they had grown tumors! A perfectly round, about 6" circle, filled with lumps and bumps, formed in the middle of each cake. Weird, I thought. I took them out on time, pleased to see the tumors disappeared, and marveled each cake's breast-like nature:

I was a little scared, because I thought maybe I had done something terribly wrong and ruined Mike's cake. Then I thought of how I failed poor Willful by giving her a junk recipe. No time to waste, I ran some errands and showered while the cakes cooled. I split each layer in half with my nifty cake string thing. When I separated each layer, I noticed holes all over the inside of the cake. Whoah no!!!! I got really nervous, then rationed nobody would notice because at least the holes were on the inside. I spread each layer with my chocolate frosting, and finished the cake off with basic buttercream decorations and writing:

With all the hidden peculiarities with this cake, I really worried what was going to happen when I served it. Surprisingly, as I sliced the cake, it nearly bounced off the plate it was so springy and moist! Everybody delighted at how moist the cake was. I chuckled to myself because right around that time, I noticed the frosting between the layers had creeped into the tiny sink holes I noticed when I split the cake. I basically made a poke cake on accident! I'm not trying to brag here, but it was honestly one of the best cakes I've ever made. The frosting tends to be super sugary but I could hardly notice because the majority of it soaked into the "bread."
I'm not sure what this means for the future of my recipe, or what it means for Willful. I think there is something wrong with it and it might not be the best for high altitude. But it certainly is a great recipe for a moist chocolate cake!

7up Meyer Lemon Pound Cake

I have a meyer lemon tree in the backyard and it must have had hundreds of meyer lemons on it this season. I gave the majority of them away, and only used a few here and there for random baking projects. I thought it was about time to do them some justice, so I found a 7up pound cake recipe that looked simple enough and decided to nix the lime it called for and replace it with meyer lemons.

I don't have much to say about the cake.. the process was a cinch and it came out perfect. The only thing is, it's not super tasty. I've had a lot of pound cake in my time, and the one thing I can count on is it being dense and buttery-greasy. This cake, however, was just dense. Each bite required a healthy sip of water afterward. And the lemon flavor was lacking. Not sure why, because I used so many!

I guess this is what I get for being lazy; what I really want to do with my meyer lemons is make Martha's Meyer Lemon Cupcakes. I'll have to do that soon, because my tree is almost bare!

7up Meyer Lemon Pound Cake, complete with Meyer Lemon Glaze

Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake

Also known as "valentine's day multiple orgasms chocolates melting in your mouth."

A little background: I first saw this recipe in a Cook's Illustrated mag sometime in mid 2009. I wanted it in my mouf so bad but didn't have a springform pan. Then I bought the pan and got distracted with the holidays and my obsessions with cakes and buttercream. Theennnnn I realized I had a lot to learn about white chocolate after I used the nestle white chips in a recipe that called for "best quality white chocolate." Have you ever tried melting that crap!? Impossible! And yes, there is one more "then:" I let Brad borrow my collection of CI mags for holiday gift ideas (I'm a woman) and he threw them out after the holidays (he's a man). Gah! These aren't my bathroom dwelling US and AAA magazines, these live on the cookbook shelf and have prestige and purpose!! I mourned them for a week or so then bought the CI annual glossy-fancy publication with all the top recipes.. and my much desired trip choc mousse cake graced the cover.

Over the period of the last couple of weeks I began collecting the ingredients. Actually, all I needed were the bittersweet chocolates and the white chocolate, but I'm a slow shopper. Lavryn mentioned there was some good white chocolate to be had at Whole Foods, so good in fact, the checker at her local WF told her she couldn't cook with it because that would be a crime against the worlds best snacking chocolate. I purchased half a pound of vlahonet whatever the F it's called French white chocolate. I was not impressed, it smelled like sharp cheese. Like, cheese you don't snack on because you'll for sure have sour milk breath and cow farts for 3 days straight. But I rationed it smelled like that because it lived near the cheese dept. and I was a no-good white trasher who didn't know the difference between white chips and white chocolate.

So I figured I came up with enough excuses and put it off long enough. The honest truth was that the recipe scared me- three layers, three times the work. I read other reviews online that the worst part was chopping the chocolate. Well, I have this nifty chopper thing with a comfortable handle (pictures below), so that wasn't a problem for me. I also heard other people say it didn't have a whole lot of flavor, or it was too bitter. I have two things to say about that. 1) I recently went to a benefit dinner with individual triple chocolate mousse cakes served as dessert, and that thing really had no flavor, absolutely no distinction between each layer. They served it with a wonderful raspberry sauce that was the only reason I continued to monch. 2) I had a major fail with the bittersweet chocolate- I only put 5 ounces of chocolate in the base layer and the recipe called for 7. So I evened it out by only putting 5 ounces in the second layer, and decided not to change anything in the white layer. This probably helped with the bitterness factor.

Overall, the mousse cake was fairly easy to make (but not cheap). I still sensed some cheesiness in the white layer but again, I'm white trash, so what do I know about quality chocolate. In hindsight I probably would have added some vanilla to the top layer. Also feel like somebody should have warned me the bottom layer would separate from the pan, causing the second layer of mousse to spill over the cake's edge and make the whole thing look like it was only two layers in the end. At the end of the day though, we're all in it for the taste. It really was a sensational experience taking my first bite.. melty richness all over the place. I inhaled my large slice, but.. it was rich and I can't bring myself to eat anymore. Brad won't eat anything that's not boxed, so I'll bring it to my other boyfriend- work. He eats anything.

I wish I could share the recipe, but as you know, I once lost this lost it, and as you may not know, CI covets all their recipes and it is nearly impossible for us non-hacky type people to find them online. This only means one thing to me- they probably wear their horns and go after anybody publishing their recipes. No thanks! So if you need it, let me know and I'll lend you my copy.

chop chop aroo!

mousse on cake, plop!

valhoknowswhatthehellitscalled:

i waited 2.5 hours for this moment:

monch, check out my uneven layers:

and now, the sad truth about my lack of experience with springform. oh and p.s., the background music was not planned, amazing!:

Crumby

I've been pulling weeds all morning and thinking about my raspberry bushes.. the poor things look very sad. Even sadder is that I potentially killed my chances at any fruit this year because I pruned them all wrong... wherps. My razzies were a year old when I got them, which meant I'd get fruit this year on the canes that flowered last year. I was supposed to trim them back right now.. but I didn't know that so they got pruned in the fall, eeek! I don't know what this means but I don't think it can be good. All I wanted was to make some raspberry jam. Waaah!!!

So anyway the point of this post was to share a little recipe I concocted last night. I bought some bartlet pears thinking I'd use them in a Martha recipe, but I never did. They ripened a couple of days ago and I had a friend coming over so I decided they needed to be eaten for dessert. I spied around for some easy recipes and didn't find anything I liked. Around NYE I made a pear clafoutis from an Ina Garten recipe- it tasted wonderful but looked like ham custard in the end. Totally unappetizing and a hard sell at work and my NYE party!! So that was out. I've had some rolled irish oats sitting around for a while, and some almond flour I bought for macaroons. After my unsuccessful spies on the interwebs, tada! I came up with a pear crumble.

2 ripe pears, cored and cut into cubes (I left the skin on)

1/4 c almond flour

1/4 c brown sugar

1/4 c rolled oats

1/8 c regular flour

2 tbsp butter, room temp

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350. Toss the pears and the spices together (extra points if you throw in some lemon juice and maybe even some vanilla) and place in an oven safe pyrex type dish. Mix all the dry ingredients together, then mash in the butter with your fingers- act like you're looking for your lost jewelry in a sandbox. When it's all incorporated, place the crumble on top of the pears and bake for 40 minutes.

Unfortunable I don't have a picture because it was so good I ate it all before the idea to blog struck me. Use your imagination! As Lavryn and I would say, "toasty oats!"

Lina-bo-bina's Birthday Cake

I love Lina. But she has a short memory. I asked her what kind of cake she likes, and she said, "I don't know, I like your cake." So I say, "which cake?" She says, "that one you made, raspberry something or other, so delicious." I'm thinking, I've made several cakes for work, and she picks the last one I made! which was actually for my birthday- a white cake with raspberry filling and raspberry buttercream. Hey, it's my fave, so I'm not complaining! It just means I am not even close to starting on my plan.. why couldn't she say, "Triple Layer Mousse Cake!" :o)

I thought I had this recipe down, but apparently not. I had a tremendous raspberry buttercream fail, which is why you will not see any pictures of that part. Not that I'm scared to show you my failures, I just panicked and forgot to document... conveniently! Honest... Long story short is my raspberries were a little too wet, and we all know the saying about oil and water. I wasn't using oil, but I suppose butter also applies. It was a globular meltdown no good disaster. I butterscreamed. Well, I spread it on the cake anyway, and it looked OK, but I couldn't serve it with a smile. So I made a second batch of plain vanilla buttercream which came out great, and I spread it on top of the raz. Lavryn would say, "too many flavor profiles!" and I'm sad she can't try it. Monch! I'll let you know what people say tomorrow. I'm excited!

making the raspberry filling:

eggs and milk, soon they will become one:

this recipe is interesting, because instead of creaming the butter and sugar first, you mix all the dry ingredients together then add the butter to create "wet crumbs." i don't like saying "wet crumbs," do you?

the batter, which smells heavily of almond extract. the recipe calls for two teaspoons, but one is enough.. the other teaspoon of vanilla sets it off:

a big L for Lina. her birthday is the day before v-day, so i added hearts to remind her that holiday birthdays are special... or something. truth be told my dern piping bag had the biggest tip on it and i couldn't change it out with something smaller. i just don't think thick lettering on a cake is cute, and monograms are kind of cool anyway:

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

After my coconut cupcake sensation at Nicole's birthday, Ashley and I made a date to try another cupcake recipe with the same seven minute frosting. We picked out Martha's snickerdoodle cupcake recipe, which is loosely related to my beloved snickerdoodle cookie- the one I inhale midday of pretend skiing or snowboarding in Tahoe. In reality the cupcake is just a basic cake with cinnamon, but I love Martha so I'll refer to it as its given name. :)

the inspiration:

ingredients:

check out that batter... plop:

pretty maids all in a row:

seven minute frosting does take longer than seven minutes, you know.

And it's not related to seven minutes in heaven, unless you are slow eater. When atop a cupcake, this heavenly frosting is consumed in 60 seconds or less:

the end!

my plan

Here is a list of recipes I plan to try this year.

From "Baking Illustrated" (America's Test Kitchen):

-Soft Pretzels

-Chocolate Cream Pie (because of the book "The Help"- go read it)

-Cream Puffs & Profiteroles

-Chiffon Cake

-Creamy Milk Chocolate Frosting

-Black and White Cookies

-Cream Cheese Brownies

-Raspberry Squares (easy but I LOVE raspberries)

From "Joy of Cooking," 1975 edition:

-Brioche Loaf Cockaigne (because the name rocks my world)

-Four Egg Cake (old-time cake that incorporates 4 whipped egg whites at the very end)

-Tomato Soup or Mystery Cake (WTF!)

From "Martha Stewart's Cupcakes":

-Chocolate Malted Cupcakes

-Mrs. Kostyra's Spice Cupcakes

-Tiny Cherry and Almond Tea Cakes

-Martha's Meyer Lemon Cupcakes

From "Baking with Julia":

-Brioche

-Puff Pastry, for Sunny Side Up Apricot Pastries

-Croissants

-Irish Soda Bread

From "Joy of Cooking," 2006 edition:

consequently, the four egg and tomato mystery cakes are still available in 2006, so I'll add:

-Deluxe Sunday Morning Coffee Cake*

-Buttermilk Biscuits*

From "Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook":

-Chocolate Wafer Sandwich Cookies (oreos)*

-Linzer Hearts

-Banana Caramel Cake

-Honey Whole Wheat Bread*

-Cinnamon Raisin Bread*

From "The Best of America's Test Kitchen, Best Recipes and Reviews 2010":

-Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake

-Ultimate Cinnamon Buns

-Easy Caramel Cake (again, please go read "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett)

That's 29 recipes, and I think, a great start.

*recommendations from the ultimate cook and baker, Lavryn

And some eye candy, a cake I made earlier this year (chocolate with chocolate frosting and buttercream decorations)

i love baking

Welcome to my first ever long-term themed blog, all about what happens when I try to bake. Mostly the results are good- I have some great teachers (Martha, Julia, Betty). Sometimes the results aren't very good.. if you've seen Cake Wrecks, you'll know what I'm talking about. But I'll let the pictures and my tasters do most of the talking. Today I'll start with an intro.

I've loved baking since... wait a minute.

First you need to know that I've never been able to cook. I can recall several occasions that I completely forgot I was cooking something, walked away from the kitchen to start on some other task, only to be reawakened by the scent of something burning to a crisp. I've killed many grilled cheese sandwiches this way. I've also bought stew meat thinking it would work in a stir fry. My biggest kitchen catastrophe was when I put cooked potatoes and milk in a vitamix blender to mash, and made glue D:

My problem with cooking is that so much is left up to interpretation, personal taste, and the ability to pay attention when nobody is telling me what to do. It kills me to admit this because I really believe I am a creative person. However, I am learning to embrace the fact that creativity and originality has its limits: I can draw and paint, but I am terrible with color; I can bake and decorate a beautiful cake, but I cannot make the same mashed potatoes twice (rest assured I now have a masher and do make some tasty mashed potatoes).

Baking is so different. You have the same basic ingredients over and over, but each time a new and very specific set of instructions which result in something marvelous. I like to think of baking like music. There are only so many notes, but each piece is different and beautiful in it's own way as long as you follow the music. Also like music, baking is as much about technicality as it is about presentation, which is where creativity comes into play. So, really, baking is the best of both worlds- technical mastery coupled with creativity. By the way, I'm not a musician so feel free to shoot me if I'm wrong.

And now to the nostalgia- I've been intrigued by baking since elementary school. My BFF Keira and I would go to her house after school and rummage through her mother's spice cabinets, looking for ingredients to make a cake or brownies. We knew there were certain things that would make the cake rise, but weren't sure what, so we experimented with baking soda and vinegar, chocolate and flour and made some pretty interesting concoctions. Our first real baking was done with a box of Jiffy Blueberry Muffins. I remember feeling so accomplished, ha! As time went on, there were so many fails and learning experiences, a lot of time spent watching and helping my oldest sister bake our birthday cakes and other treats, and eventually creating some of my own traditions (semi-homemade desserts and fabulous chocolate chip cookies), it's hard to keep track.

A turning point came last year, when Brad bought me a stand mixer for my birthday. I was so excited because I had always wanted one since the days in Keira's kitchen with an older than old yellow Kitchen Aid mixer. I chatted with my friend Lavryn about my new gift, who at some point in the conversation informed me she was going on a diet. What! She's in perfect shape, and doesn't diet! Then she went on to explain her diet involved baking all of her own desserts from scratch because at least that way she knew exactly what was in them. Ha!!

Equipped with my new love, the stand mixer, I stole her diet plan and began baking my own cakes and cookies whenever I wanted something sweet. I would bring all the extras into work and miraculously didn't gain a pound as long as I continued to work out. Best. Diet. Ever.

Over the course of the year I have mastered only a couple of things with my new mixer: white cake, chocolate cake, red velvet cake, cream cheese frosting, 7 minute frosting, and swiss meringue buttercream (vanilla, raspberry and strawberry variations). I've made French Almond Macaroons a couple of times with varying results- thankfully both were delicious. I'd like to work on the macaroons some more, a good yellow butter cake, chocolate frosting, vanilla bean frosting, and a caramel cake. I'd also like to learn how to make a good pie crust without shortening and also experiment with some finer french pastries.. I say experiment because I don't have much faith that anything will turn out.

Next blog I'll list the recipes I plan to try this year and the books they come from. They'll be heavy on the Martha, Julia, and Cook's Illustrated side. Wish me luck.. I still don't have a food processor!

Cheers,
Colleen