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".