Cake #4 - Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream a.k.a. The Toothpaste Cake

I mentioned that Abby from work volunteered me to make a cake for a baby shower at work.  I cannot exclaim enough, how I am NOT doing this for public acclaim nor do I think my cakes are all that - I would have much preferred to throw some money at the budget problem and just buy one from Rosie's Bakery.  Plus, these are new recipes to us, so I cannot even vouch for them.  On one hand, I have very high cake standards.  On the other, if it is called cake, it will pretty much be cleared from any plate near me, without complaint.  Frosting is really my favorite part of the cake, but I am developing an heightened appreciation for the cake part too.  And, I had no idea all the nuances of different frostings.  I was pretty content with the tubs of Betty Crocker, and still am, but maybe am developing some new favorites.  Okay, so back to this cake.

I CHEATED. Cake #4 and I already am cheating.  This cake is a layer cake with a pyramid of mini-cupcakes on top.  In fact, the recipe says, "garnish with mini vanilla cupcakes" as if we all have mini cupcakes lying around as garnish.  Since this was a work thing and I already made a cake this week, I recruited Abby to make the cupcakes.  She knows her way around a kitchen too, so I felt okay delegating this part.  She was game to try the recipes and we coordinated on the colors, which were pretty similar to those in the photo on Epicurious.  I brought the layer cake.  She brought the mini cupcakes.  We assembled in the conference room.  

Overall, this cake seemed kind of boring on paper.  Chocolate cake.  Vanilla buttercream.  Pile some cupcakes on top for a "wow" factor.  The cake batter was a snap to make.  It had a liquidy consistency similar to a box mix.  I had all of the ingredients in my pantry, so this was sort of a $0 cost cake.  

The frosting was intriguing.  It required a candy thermometer, which automatically ups the ante of my time in the kitchen.  I do not have a good one and I always assume I will ruin whatever pan is involved.    It also requires a level of execution that is above par.  Once the temperature is reached, all your other steps better be prepped and ready.  It's go time people.  

I was ready.  I rocked it.  With the steady help of my kitchen aide mixer.  I added the butter.

Whoa nelly, there was a lot of butter.  Now here is where I had a substitution.  6 sticks of "unsalted" butter.  While baking, I sometimes skip the "unsalted" and just add less salt - never had a problem with any batters.  I substituted salted butter here, and as I added it, and realized its different when butter is 98% of the ingredients - maybe not the best idea.  I wished I had the unsalted.  When the butter, er, frosting was done, it tasted very buttery and maybe too salty - but Ben & Kassi told me it tasted good, no reason to be paranoid.   I was not sure until I had it with the cake the next day.  And, it was great.  Abby made hers with the recommended unsalted butter, and I definitely preferred the salted butter version (less slippery, more tasty) - so I was glad we had a comparison.  

And, while adding the dots in blue, yellow and green, each dallop added looked more and more like toothpaste to me, hence the Toothpaste Cake.  I think I would skip this design in the future.  

A note on the cupcakes.  Abby used the foil liners for mini cupcakes, but they were too big for her cupcake pan.  Apparently the box says you can cook the foil liners alone on a cookie sheet and they will hold their shape.  They did, but they expanded a bit to be wider than mini cupcakes...so we could not stack 4 layers in our pyramid, only 3.  

Oh!  And I almost ran out of frosting.  Assembling the cake says to put the flat side down and the rounded side of the top layer down, (but it says it better than that) basically, rounded sides in the middle.  I suppose so there is a flat top to put the cupcakes.  This required extra frosting "glue" in the middle so an nice thick layer of middle frosting.  I always have extra frosting and I always think I go too light in the middle, so I layered it on.  But then it was time to frost the outside of a chocolate cake with white frosting.  I was so glad I froze the cakes the night before frosting them - made for less crumb to maneuver my millimeter of frosting.  Oh, and I froze them in the pans I baked them in (after taking them out to cool on racks) - but could not get them out of the pans when I wanted to resume frosting.  Patted myself on the back for thinking of putting the pans on my stovetop burners for a few seconds to unfreeze them from the pan.  

Overall, we declared this cake the best plain chocolate cake ever made at home.  If you like Rosie's Bakery, this cake and the frosting was nearly identical to what we order there.  And it was good.  I will definitely keep this in my repertoire of standard cakes - when you want a good one without a whole fussy "to do".  

Cake #3 - Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate Orange Frosting - Mindy's turn

My turn. Let me start by saying that this was one of the cakes in our list of 30 that I was not too excited to make. For one...I am just not down with the floral notes in chocolate. Lavender as ingredient in anything but a sock drawer satchel didn't appeal to me. I'm also not a fan of the chocolate and orange combination.

But you know what? The fundamentals of this cake were so strong, so awesome, that I really liked it in spite of the lavender and orange. Go figure. I guess I need to take my own advice - the advice I'm giving constantly to the five year old; how will you know if you like it if you don't try it?

I thought that I was going to get out of using the lavender due to an inability to find it, but lo and behold, my local Whole Foods had it in bulk. For a mere $.26 I came home with more than I needed. Like Sherie, I also had the problem of grinding the lavender, but I put my helper to work on it, and she did a great job.

Unlike Sherie, I didn't strain out any particles, but it all seemed rather uniform. And, I opted for a different cake form: the pumpkin. We have Halloween Fever in these parts, and the idea that we'd make the cake in the shape of a pumpkin was met with great enthusiasm. This shape added another 15 minutes or so baking time to the cake.

Do you know this trick? When you're making a chocolate cake, rather than dust your pans with flour, dust with cocoa powder! Thank you, Cooks Illustrated for that awesome, and frequently used, quick tip!

It is a crying shame that I do not have a picture of the cakes after they came out of the pan. Golden brown, springy, moist....perfect. Really, this might be one of the greatest chocolate cakes that I've ever made. Frankly, it didn't need any frosting (oh, but the frosting! more on that in a minute). A light dusting of powdered sugar would have made the cake plenty decadent.

Ah, but the frosting. Hands down, this might be one of the best recipes I have ever encountered for butter cream frosting. I haven't made enough recipes for butter cream frosting to know why or how it was different, but it was amazing. I could have sat with a bowl of it. EVEN WITH THE ORANGE. I know! I thought that I would hate the orange flavor, but I actually liked it. In full disclosure, I didn't use quite as much as the recipe called for. One orange yielded not quite a full tablespoon of zest, and I opted to not zest a second one.

Not quite a tablespoon, but close enough.

And, we did not have any orange liqueur or Grand Marnier, so I skipped it. The orange flavor was plenty enough for me, but I am curious now to know what it would taste like in full flavor. One of the most interesting things about the frosting was the addition of a half teaspoon of coarse kosher salt. The frosting definitely had a salt edge that took the edge off the sweetness of the chocolate.

I include a photograph of our final, decorated cake with a word to the wise. One really should let the cake (as EVERY SINGLE RECIPE EVER has stated) cool fully before frosting. But, I made this late afternoon, and we wanted to be able to have it after dinner for dessert. I thought that the cake was cooled enough, but my frosting started melting, and I had to use a skewer to hold the top and bottom of the cake together. Frankly, with the melting chocolate icing, it looked disgusting.

Oh, but the taste! I ate a piece every day for six days until yesterday when I threw it out - not because it had gone bad, but because I just could not stop myself. Make it. You will love it too.

Cake #3 Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate Orange Buttercream Frosting

There's been a cake landslide in Cambridge lately.  After the monsoon, I was in the mood to bake.  We were in the mood for chocolate and there you have it.  Chocolate cake.  With Orange Chocolate buttercream.  Only to get to work the next day and find out someone has heard I have a baking project and recruited me to make a cake for an office baby shower on Friday.  What? 2 Cakes in 1 week?  More on that later.  I do not want to take away from this amazing cake. Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate-Orange Buttercream  

I am starting to think of cakes on a couple of new fronts, like how easy is it to make with ingredients on hand in my pantry and after my first cake, the $30 cake, in terms of cost of ingredients.  I have to say this cake was both easy and complex at the same time.  The only specialty ingredients I needed were dark chocolate, usually a staple in my pantry, but we were out, and "dried lavender blossoms".  Lucky me.   I live in Inman Square, home to Christina's Ice Cream and neighboring spice shop that seems to have every obscure spice - as in if its tough to find, I have found it there, and if they did not carry it, I would have to throw in the towel and substitute, because I could not think of another place to look.  Everything in Inman Square seems to be closed on Sundays, so I thought I had no shot, but surprise again, the obscure spice shop IS open on Sundays (maybe because people like me like to cook on Sundays and cannot plan ahead).  And, imagine my further surprise that a lifetime supply only cost $3.36.  My recipe needed "dried lavender blossoms" and this was "lavender" with what looked like blossoms in the pack, but I was hesitant b/c it was not called the exact name.  It looked a lot like the potpourri in my sock drawer.  It also looked a lot like a plant on my front stoop, but I did not want to poison us if I was horticulturally wrong.  

For the record, I was supposed to get a teaspoon of it out of a spice grinder, but we do not have one.  I used the mortar & pestly instead.  But then I also had to use my fine mesh sieve, since the mortar & pestle yielded some hay-like strands in it that instinct told me would not be great.  I used only about half of the teaspoon I needed - in case I was wrong on my assumptions & substituyions, I did not want to overwhelm & ruin the whole cake.  

I also want to say a bit about the ingredients.  I was being lazy (in comparison to my search for cherries in cake #1) and I only needed chocolate and I needed a slew of other groceries.  Back to Trader Joe's.  For the amount and kind I needed, I wound up with the "Pound Plus" pictured above.  I was worried this chocolate might not be "fancy" enough and could make my whole cake pedestrian when it could be amazing.  Well, in the end, the cake WAS amazing and I was relieved that my choice of chocolate did not bring it down.  
Maybe it was this picture that prompted my husband to declare he would become my official cake photographer - I keep forgetting to take pictures of a slice or inside of the cake.  This one with the salsa coming out of the top, maybe not the greatest.  
One of the things I liked about this cake was the multiple chocolates involved and the complexity of making them.  It is a messy-kitchen cake for sure.  Melting chocolate for the batter, dissolving cocoa, melting chocolate for the frosting, etc.  Many bowls.  Many pans.  Much mess.  Very worth it.  I have been bringing cake to work.  This one elicited comments like, "Restaurant Quality!" "My favorite frosting- I need the recipe" and "Oh, it was too rich.  I cannot finish a piece."  I took that last one as a compliment too.  Wimps.  

We did realize that temperature matters in serving the cake.  Room temperature, as recommended, might be too decadent to eat.  The only way to get through a whole piece is to eat it cold from the fridge - at which time you might even want a second piece.  Kind of the reverse Krispy Kreme theory (that hot you could eat a box, but cold, 2 would clog your heart).  The lavender was there if you knew it, but not overwhelming.  I could have used the full amount.  The orange was only in the frosting and was perfect for some, needed to be more orangey for some and too orangey for others.  So there you have it.  
Me and my kitchen helpers.  To buy me some alone time in the kitchen, I let the girls measure the sugar I needed, but then left them with some tools at the table.  I took all the goods away and was in the kitchen.  Elliot was helping me above, but Samantha was being awfully quiet in her high chair.  I forgot to take away the BAG of brown sugar.  She swiped it from what I thought was out of her reach.  I was in the kitchen a good 5 minutes before finding her below, shoving fistfuls of brown sugar into her mouth.  I am pretty sure that was not a full bag to start - but I was also pretty sure I cleared the table, so who knows.  And since she already had so much of it, it did not bother me to let her keep it the extra 30 seconds it took me to get my camera.