Southern Chocolate Layer Cake

It's true. My layer cake looked nothing like the gem that appeared in the New York Times. But, in my defense, that lady has been making them for something ridiculous like 70 years. And even if it wasn't a looker, it sure was delicious.

Since I'm nothing if not ambitious, I knew as soon as I read the NY Times piece on southern layer cakes that I had to try my hand at it. So when my mom asked what we should have for dessert with Christmas dinner, I naturally insisted it should be a 15-layer cake. Naturally.

Sadly, because of operator error (see above) and inexact measurements, I only ended up with a nine-layer cake. But after all, it was just my first attempt.


Eat Rating: Delicious. The thing I liked about this cake is there is plenty of icing the soaks into the layers, but its not overwhelmed by the icing like some cakes are.
Difficulty: Medium to hard. It certainly is a production. Requires three cake pans, sifter, hand mixer (or Kitchenaid) and parchment rounds.

Adapted from The New York Times, Dec. 15, 2009

Cake
1 cup (2 sticks) of butter
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/3 cup of shortening (LN: I, stupidly, assumed my mom would have shortening on hand and didn't pick it up at the store. We subbed another 1/3 cup of butter)
5 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
5 cups cake flour (LN: I used all-purpose)
2 tsp baking soda
5 tsp baking powder
2 cups milk

Frosting
5 cups granulated sugar
1/3 cup cocoa
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, cut into pieces
1 15 oz. can evaporated milk
1/2 cup milk (LN: The recipe calls for whole. I subbed 2 percent)
2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Liberally grease three 9-inch round cake pans, layer with a round of parchment and grease again. (LN: Don't skip the parchment! It really helps because you're going to need to re-use the cake pans and it's much easier than washing them between layers)

Place the butter, shortening and sugar in a bowl and cream with electric mixer. Add the eggs one at a time, beating between each addition. Mix in the vanilla. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Gradually add the flour mixture in batches to the cake base, adding 1/2 cup of milk in between each round of flour until fully incorporated.

Beat the cake batter for approximately 5 minutes until it is smooth. Add 3/4 cup of batter to each cake pan and bake for 6-8 minutes until cooked through (LN: in my oven, it was more like 10-12 when I baked all three layers at once).

While the cake is still warm, flip it out onto a paper towel or rack. Re-butter and line your cake pan and stick another set of layers in the oven. You should ultimately do four rounds of layers, end up with 12 total. (LN: Unless you have mess ups like I did, in which case you may only have nine layers).

While the layers are baking, start the icing. Place butter, sugar, cocoa, milk and evaporate milk into a large saucepan. Bring to a boil. Boil for 4 minutes. Reduce heat to simmer, add vanilla and then cook for an additional 10 minutes. You want the icing to be the consistency of hot fudge sauce. Don't overcook. The icing will firm up some as it cools.

Once the icing is finished, place one layer of the cake on a serving plate. Top with 4-5 tablespoons of icing. Add another layer. Repeat until all the layers have been added. Pour the remaining icing over the top of the cake, allowing to drip down the sides. Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Wedding Cake Project: Chocolate Guinness Cake

My friend's camera phone takes surprisingly good photos.

I first made this cake last year for an office birthday. Like most office birthdays, we gathered in the conference room, made chit-chat about how old the person was and what she was going to do for her birthday. Then I told everyone there was a secret ingredient in the cake and passed out slips of paper for everyone to guess. The guesses were funny (someone actually guessed "pot") but no one could guess it was Guinness. It's one of those things that you don't actually taste until someone tells you it's there.

My co-worker Anne loved the cake and asked me every time there was a birthday whether I was making it. So for her birthday, of course, I had to make it.

If you click the link to the NYT recipe, you'll note it has some strange measurements (3/8 cup). I tweaked them a little so they work better with American measuring cups. I recommend trying to find European style cocoa, like Droste (King Arthur sells it also). Sometimes you can find Hershey's European Style Cocoa, but some stores don't carry it.

When you make this recipe, you heat the Guinness up in a saucepan to burn a little of the alcohol off, then mix in the chocolate. As it cooks, the Guinness mellows and ends up adding a nice complexity to the chocolate flavor.

The cake itself is very rich and a little fudge-y in the middle. Don't overcook it or it will come out dry. The recipe makes a little too much batter for a regular 9 inch round. You can either make a 9-inch round and then a smaller cake on the side, use a springform pan (since it has taller sides) or use a 10-inch round. The one pictured is a 10-inch round -- what will be the middle layer of the wedding cake.

The recipe also calls for a cream cheese frosting. You're supposed to swirl it on top to make it look like the head of a pint of Guinness. I'm not very good at swirling, though. If you want the cream cheese frosting, don't try to substitute something else for the cream. That gives you frosting that's way too thin. According to Gourmet and the guys at The Bitten Word, it's also lovely with a peanut butter frosting.

The last piece.

Adapted from Nigella Lawson

Cake:
1 cup Guinness Stout (LN: use the can! it's so much better than the bottle.)
10 tbsp. butter (1 1/2 sticks)
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 cups granulated sugar
1/3 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking soda

Frosting:
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
1 8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour your cake pan (see above for info on what cake pan to use).

In a small saucepan, heat the Guinness and butter until the butter is melted. Remove from heat and add in the cocao and sugar, whisking until well combined. Set aside.

In the bowl of a Kitchenaid (or in a medium-sized bowl, using hand mixer), combine the sour cream, eggs and vanilla. Mix for 2 minutes or until well combined. Add in the Guinness mixture (if using your Kitchenaid, put on the splash guard so it doesn't get everywhere when you turn on the beaters). Gradually add the flour and baking soda, mixing between each addition until fully incorporated and you have a nice medium-thickness cake batter.

Pour into prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour. I recommend baking 45 minutes, then checking every five minutes until a toothpick tester comes out clean. You don't want to overbake or the cake will be dry. Remove from oven and cool on wire rack in the pan.

Once the cake is cool, combine the cream cheese and powdered sugar in a bowl and beat until well combined. Gradually add in the cream, beating until desired consistency.

Remove cake from pan and frost, swirling the frosting on top so it looks like the head on a pint of Guinness. Serve with a tall glass of milk or refrigerate until needed, then remove about 30 minutes before serving.

It's a Recession!: Homemade Energy Bars

Not much of a looker, but damn is she good.

Today we debut a new weekly feature, It's a Recession!, where I attempt to make foods at home that I would normally buy at the store. I will freely admit this idea was inspired by this article in Slate where another food blogger attempted to figure out which pantry staples (bagels, cream cheese, etc.) you could make at home more cheaply. The article also led me to her food blog, which is also pretty cool.

Anyway, I thought this was a great idea. My first attempt at yogurt failed. Miserably. More on that in a few weeks once I've gotten it right. Because of that failure, I moved on to something I thought would be a little easier: snack bars. I found a seemingly simple recipe in the "Tate's Bake Shop Cookbook," which I got for my birthday. This attempt was also a miserable failure. I took one to work in my lunch and sent another with CCO. Around lunchtime I was forced to send him this message: "Subject: DON'T EAT IT. Message: Unless it's already too late." His slightly more generous reply: "Yeah. Not so good."

So we'll save that one for another time. Perhaps it is also salvageable.

Feeling horrible about myself for being a failure, I will give you a cool recipe I tried a couple weeks back that has been making its way around some other food blogs. Larabars are made out of all raw ingredients -- mostly nuts and fruits -- with a base of dates. They are tasty, with no-sugar added because of the sweetness of the date, and only about 200 calories each (I knew you'd wonder that part, Annie.) I found the basis for this recipe on Chocolate and Zucchini. This other food blog by Camilla Saulsbury also has a bunch of other variations, but I have not had a chance to try those yet.

Anyway, I played with Clothilde's recipe a little since I couldn't actually find date paste. You can buy Medjool dates in the bulk food aisle at Whole Foods. If you go to Whole Foods, make sure to buy them in the bulk food section where they are $6.99/lb. If you buy them in the pre-made plastic cartons in the produce section, they cost $7.99/lb. Sneaky Whole Foods. You can also find them in the produce section at some Trader Joes stores.

Eat Rating: Awesome. I ate them all within a day and had to make a second batch because I forgot to take a photo.
Difficulty: Easy. Just requires a food processor and a rubber scraper.

Adapted from Chocolate and Zucchini, "Homemade Larabars"

8 Medjool dates, pits removed and roughly chopped
3-4 tsp water
1/2 cup roasted almonds (LN: Try to get ones that aren't salted. If you have salted, you can rinse them in a colander to remove the salt.)
1/2 cup walnuts
1/8 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1 heaping tbsp cocoa nibs (LN: Not the chocolate covered ones)

Spray the bottom of a loaf pan with Pam or olive oil. Also tear a sheet of saran wrap or wax paper long enough to cover the pan. Set both aside.

Place the dates in the bowl of a food processor and pulse several times. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add 1-2 tsp of water. Pulse again, then scrape, repeating until the dates are broken down into a paste consistency. It will be a thick, chunky paste, more like a course meal than something like tomato paste. Add the nuts and pulse several times to chop them up. Add the cinnamon, cocoa and nibs, pulsing again until just combined. At this point, my mixture had started to ball in the bowl of the food processor.

Scrape the content of the bowl into the loaf pan. Using the wrap or wax paper, press the mixture into the pan until it is roughly level. Once the pan is filled, place the wax paper or wrap directly onto the bars and refridgerate for at least 4 hours. After the bars are solid, you can cut them in to bars and wrap in wax paper until ready to eat.

My variations:
Chocolate Cherry - Omit the 1/2 cup of walnuts and increase the almonds to 1 cup. Add 1/2 cup of dried cherries when you add the spices and chocolate.

Choco-coconut - Omit the 1/2 cup of walnuts and increase the almonds to 1 cup. Add in 1/2 to 3/4 cup of unsweetened shredded coconut.

Chocolate cranberry - Omit the 1/2 cup of almonds and increase the walnuts to 1 cup. Add in 1/2 cup of dried cranberries.

White Chocolate Mousse with Raspberry Sauce

Delish.

So, I didn't initially intend to make the strawberry tart for my grandma's birthday. I had wanted to make a flourless dark chocolate cake, and pulled out Orangette's Winning Hearts and Minds cake, which I had been saving for a special occasion. Only I managed to mess it up. It was sort of pathetic. I mean the recipe was ridiculously easy. It only requires one bowl and five ingredients. But I destroyed it.

To be fair, it wasn't the recipe that messed me up, but rather my clumsiness. It was sad really because I was trying to be very diligent about following the recipe for once. She suggests making the cake ahead of time, freezing it and then defrosting to get the best flavor. So on Thursday night, I started making the cake so it could freeze til Friday night and then have 24 hours to defrost. Everything was fine, until I went to flip the cake. She has very specific instructions on how to best flip the cake once it's removed from the pan. Instead of flipping it onto a plate, though, I was trying to flip it back onto a sheet of saran wrap so I could wrap it up and stuff it in the freezer. This was an ill-conceived idea however and the cake split in two, right down the middle. Exasperated, I turned to the picture on the cover of Gourmet.

Although I'm sure you were enthralled by my cake-mishap story, I told it for a reason. I decided to make lemonade from my lemons and use the broken chocolate cake for dessert for my brother and sister-in-law. To accompany the dark chocolate, I pulled out this recipe for Coeur a la Creme with Raspberry Sauce -- that's a fancy way of saying White Chocolate Mousse -- also courtesy Orangette. And it worked out beautifully.

She recommends either using a fancy mold or using a colander wrapped in cheese cloth. That seemed difficult to me and I couldn't find cheese cloth at my store, so I just used a bowl. Not as pretty, but it worked for my purposes.

Eat Rating: Wonderful. Particularly if you are a white chocolate fan.
Difficulty: Easy. I skipped the hardest part which required cheesecloth straining.

Adapted from "Couer a La Creme with Raspberry Puree", A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg

3 ounches white chocolate, chopped or cut into chunks
1 8-oz package of cream cheese, room temperature
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 10-oz bag frozen unsweetened raspberries, thawed in a bowl
3 tbsp sugar

In a microwave bowl, melt the white chocolate. (You can also do this in a bowl over a pot of boiling water on the stove). Stir well until smooth, set aside to cool.

In a medium sized bowl, mix the cream cheese, 1/4 cup of cream and the powdered sugar. Add the white chocolate and combine until smooth, about 2 minutes with an electric mixer. Set aside.

With an electric mixer, preferrably a Kitchenaid so your arms don't get tired, beat the 1 cup of cream until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture, folding in until completely combined. Spoon the mixture into the mold. (Or I just scraped down the edges of my bowl and then covered with saran wrap, making sure to have the wrap touch the top layer of cream). Refridgerate for at least 8 hours or overnight.

Once the raspberries are defrosted, puree them in a blender or food processor. Add the sugar and blend until smooth. At this point, she suggest pushing the raspberries through a sieve/cheese cloth to remove the seeds. I was lazy and served with seeds. Chill for at least 4 hours.

To serve, place a spoonful of the mousse in a dish and top with raspberry sauce. Goes wonderfully on top of a piece of broken cake.

Orangette's Chocolate Bourbon Cake

Friday was one of my favorite editors' last day at the office. It was one of those really bittersweet days. She had been with the company for 12 years, the sort of person who everyone loves for their friendliness and optimism. But she got offered a better job with another news org, so you couldn't really blame her for leaving.

As a going-away present of sorts, I offered to bake her something. She requested chocolate. I had been saving this Orangette recipe -- a whisky-soaked dark chocolate bundt cake -- on the list of "Cakes to Try" for my birthday. But I felt this occasion trumped my birthday.

The cake takes an enitre cup of whiskey. I used Knob Creek Bourbon because it was what I had on hand. Like Orangette suggested, I made the cake a day ahead of time to let the alcohol-taste mellow. But even with the extra day, it was super intense. The middle of the cake is rich and fudgey, almost like a gooey brownie, and this is where the alcohol seemed to settle. As one coworker noted, after she ate a piece it felt almost like she had taken a shot. So after trying a piece, I had a thought: This is a cake for whiskey lovers; if you don't like whiskey, you probably wouldn't like it, and that's too bad because dark chocolate and whiskey are a good combination.

So Friday night, after all the drunken after-work merriment, I decided to try again and make one for CCO, who always complains that it's not fair when I make cakes for work because he never gets to try them. I didn't really need another whole 10-cup bundt cake, so I halved it. And halving the recipe seems to be the magic touch. Because the cake itself is smaller, that center of whiskey fudginess is also smaller and less overwhelming.

Eat Rating: Awesome, even for non-whiskey lovers
Difficulty: Easy to Medium (special tools: Espresso maker -- or two shots from a coffee shop)

Half-size Chocolate-Bourbon Cake, from Orangette, via the New York Times

1 stick butter, softened
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 oz. dark unsweetened chocolate (LN: I used 72% E. Guittard)
2 shots of espresso
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 cup bourbon
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tbsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using butter or spray, grease and flour a bundt pan. Over a double boiler, melt chocolate. Set aside.

Place cocoa in a glass measuring cup (Pyrex). Add the salt and two shots of espresso -- this should be up to about the 1/2 cup line. Stir until blended. Add bourbon. Set aside.

Cream butter, then add sugar until combined, light and fluffy. Add the eggs, then vanilla, baking soda and chocolate, beating well between each addition. Add about 1/3 of the whiskey-chocolate sauce and beat until combined. Add 1/2 cup of flour, beat again, then alternate between whisky and flour, finishing with the whiskey mixture. Scrape into pan and bake for about 45-50 minutes until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Cool of wire rack for 15-20 minutes, then remove from pan. Sprinkle a little more whiskey/bourbon - 2 or 3 tbsp - on top of the cake and then sprinkle with powdered sugar if you like.

Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Cake

When C was a kid, his mom would make him a chocolate chip sour cream cake every year for his birthday. So this year, I tried to recreate the cake, using this recipe from the Boston Globe.

Eat Rating: Awesome. The cake itself is very moist from the sour cream. Two suggestions, make sure you mix the cinnamon and chocolate chips well or you'll end up with splotches of cinnamon rather than a consistent layer. Second, the cake is rather large. If you're making it for just a couple people, you might try halving the recipe.
Difficulty: Easy to medium. The hardest part is separating the eggs and whipping the whites.