Cake # 6 - Mile High Chocolate Cake

I have a tummy ache as I type this...all due to a piece of the Mile High Chocolate Cake that I just ate with a cup of coffee. More on that in a bit....

First, do you know how hard it is to find 8" cake pans? After trying a few places without success I remember that Sherie once told me the best cake decorating supplies can be found at craft stores, like Michael's. I just so happened to be near my neighborhood Jo Ann's Fabrics, and lo and behold...8" pans! Huzzah.

The batter of this cake ended up tasting like the most awesome chocolate pudding you ever had. It was thick, rich, and not too sweet (due in part to all the chocolate in the recipe begin unsweetened). When I was scooping the batter into the pans, I got to thinking about how incredibly liquid the batter for boxed cakes is - this was so very different. Soooo much better. And, really, not that time-consuming at all.

Moist and luscious batter brought to you by:

Butter melted with unsweetened chocolate

An unbelievable TWO cups of sour cream

The result - a super thick batter

The cake came out incredibly moist and rich and wonderful. I baked the cakes a day before I planned to frost them, and I stored them in my fridge. I can't imaging slicing each of the cakes in half if they had not been chilled - I think that they would have fallen apart. That's how wonderful moist they were.

For me, this was the last time the recipe went well. The frosting was a big hot mess. And I'm not using "hot" to just sound like a contestant on Project Runway.

So, to make the icing, you cook milk, flour, cocoa powder etc. on the stove and then add chopped chocolate. The result is a really thick paste - almost like frosting. The recipe says to cool this mix to room temperature and then add it to SIX STICKS OF BUTTER [oof]. My big mistake was not letting the chocolate paste cool enough [I was in a hurry - when will I learn!] before adding it to the butter. The butter immediately started to melt, and suddenly I had a very thin, almost liquidy frosting. Crap. I threw the entire thing into the fridge to firm up.

After chilling for a few hours, I took out the bowl of frosting, let it warm up a bit, and then rewhipped it with my standing mixer. And, all in all, it had great texture. The problem, however, little tiny lumps of butter that I could not get rid of no matter how much I whipped the frosting. Seeing how I was making this cake for a birthday boy who despises butter, this was not a good thing.

Those little pale flecks? Butter. Ewww.

All that being said, the frosting, at room temperature, tasted pretty good. Again with the pudding reference, but that's what it tasted like - rich chocolatey, but not sweet, pudding. But, and this is a very big but, that was at room temperature.

The true test of a cake, in my opinion, is how it tastes the next morning with coffee. The frosting, when cold, is way too buttery. Greasy in the mouth, butter overwhelming the chocolate. Yuck. The cake itself still tastes wonderful, and I'm sure that I'll have it again after I scrape off the frosting. I'll definitely make the cake again, but not the frosting. Even if I hadn't screwed up, that's just too much butter in a frosting for my liking.

Oh, and Mile High? Not quite, but very tall and impressive!

[Hey Chicagoans, if you love really buttery butter cream and
want to come and take away a chunk of cake, let me know!]