Thank You to my husband

After giving my first class in May (Buttercream Basics- Cake Decorating), I made my husband a "Thanks" cake to let him know how much I appreciated his support. 

One of his favorites is chocolate, so it was a chocolate cake topped with cocoa frosting. I baked a 6 inch cake (15.2 cm) using a modified Whimsical Bakehouse Chocolate Butter Cake recipe.

Chocolate Cake
Ingredients:
125 ml coffee (1/2 cup)
51 g of cocoa powder (1/2 cup)
125 ml low-fat milk (1/2 cup)
156 g all-purpose flour (1 1/2 cups) (zeeuwsebloem)
24 g corn starch (maizena)
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
165 g unsalted butter (1 stick, or 1/2 cup)
262 g sugar (1 1/4 cups)(fijn crystal suiker)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:
Heat oven to 350 degrees F or 177 degrees C. Using butter, grease the bottom of a 6" (15.2 cm) round cake pan that is about 3" tall (7.6cm). Cut a parchment circle to fit into the bottom of the pan(it will stick to the butter), and then grease and flour the parchment bottom and also the sides of the pan.

Combine the hot coffee and cocoa powder, whisking until no lumps. Add the milk to the coffee/cocoa and set this aside to cool a bit. In another bowl, combine the flour, corn starch, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside the dry ingredients. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the butter and sugar. Beat well, and then add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add the vanilla and mix to combine. Add about 1/3 of the dry ingredient mixture (flour, etc.) and mix to combine.  Add about 1/3 of the wet ingredient mixture (coffee, etc.) and mix to combine. Continue to add the dry ingredients, mixing to combine, alternately with the wet ingredients (coffee, etc.) in about three additions each. You will have about 965g of batter. 
Pour 630g of batter into the prepared pan. Cupcakes can be made with the remaining batter- it makes about 5 cupcakes, fill the cupcakes about 60% of the way to the top.

Bake the cake for about 25-35 minutes. The best way to check the cake to see if it is done is to use both the tooth-pick test and the spring-back test. Insert a wooden tooth-pick into the center of the cake and it should come out clean (with no crumbs). Next, lightly press your finger into the center of the cake and it should spring back a bit (if it just leaves a dent, the cake is not done). (The cupcakes take about 20 minutes to bake.)

Take the cake out of the oven, run a knife around the edge to separate the cake from the pan, and then cool the cake for about 10 minutes in the pan, then turn it out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Once cooled, frost with Cocoa Frosting from the Good Housekeeping Illustrated Book of Desserts:

Cocoa Frosting
300 g powdered sugar (2 2/3 cups)
75 g cocoa (3/4 cup)
87 g unsalted butter (6 Tbsp)
80 ml milk (1/3 cup)
2 Tbsp light corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp salt
Combine all ingredients on low speed until blended. Increase speed to high and whip until smooth and glossy. Add a bit more milk if necessary to achieve your preferred consistency. 

Assembly:
First, I placed a dollop of frosting on the cake board (I often reuse the styrofoam circles that refrigerated pizza at AH is packaged on!) so that the cake won't slide around.

Next, I leveled the top of the cake and then torted the cake (cut it in half horizontally).

 

The cocoa frosting as a filling makes life simple (and is tasty!)

 I placed the second layer of cake on top and then remembered that I should have used the bottom (the part of the cake that is in contact with the pan) as the very top to make frosting the cake easier (fewer crumbs).

Oh well! I frosted the top and sides of the cake with the cocoa frosting.

I trimmed the edge of the foam to get rid of the unsightly frosting (this was tricky to do, and I have a better method I'll share involving baking paper around the edge of the cake, which is removed after you frost it.) A cake turn-table is essential for me when decorating, otherwise my wrists have to contort in all sorts of weird ways to get the borders even.

And I decorated with the Basic Buttercream icing that tastes amazing and looks divine.

My husband has supported me throughout our time together, and this adventure is no exception. Keeping our Dina occupied with fun things to do while I plan, blog, and bake is not easy. She's always interested in helping her mommy bake and decorate (and 'clean' up the extra frosting.)

I love that Dina is excited about my passion for baking. And I love that my husband is, too. Thank you so much, MJM!

Stay tuned for the next date for my Buttercream Basics Cake Decorating class, on a Sunday afternoon in mid-August. In addition, I'm planning a new class: Cupcakes in Buttercream, which will be a Tuesday night in late-August.

 Everybody loves cupcakes...

 

 ...especially my Dina!

In the beginning...

Cake is love. Where does the name of my blog come from, you ask? Grab a cup of coffee (a frappy, if you are able) and find an old copy of Cooks Illustrated. Then, use the coffee to bake a chocolate cake. Drink the frappy.

In all seriousness, the title of my blog comes from a little taste-test event my best friend, Jenny and I organized years ago.

MLG and JCS

It was in the fall of 2002... I remember the frost on the ground and Jenny and Jeff's house on Dewey Ave with the long skinny kitchen, and bright, open dining room. We had a plan, Jenny and I. Her husband, Jeff was a huge fan of chocolate cake. Neither of us were sure what was the 'best' chocolate cake recipe, however, so we decided to find out so she could make it for his birthday. We each invited judges- for me it was Minh&Matt and for her it was Debbie&whats-his-name, and her brother-in-law, Mark. We prepared for days, testing cake recipes, deciding on the final twelve (!!!) options to sample.

The answer key! Note the chocolate smudges!

We each had made 2 types of chocolate cake:(Curly cake, Black Magic(BM), Godiva Chocolate Raspberry Cake, and Triple Chocolate Celebration(T3)) and with several frostings/toppings that made a total of 12 pairings. With our group of judges, that meant we would need 9 plates, each with 12 tiny slices of cake. But how to rank them? And what to name each one? Or to use numbers?
It was complicated... until we realized we didn't have to number or name the samples- we could use letters!
"W" "H" "Y" "C" "A" "K" "E" "I" "S" "L" "U" "V".  Twelve unique letters, Twelve pieces of cake. And we'd put each letter on a little piece of paper taped to a toothpick. So we decided couples could share a plate and we made 60 of them (4 couples+1 single*12 pieces of cake each). We also stayed true to each original recipe, so for example Triple Chocolate Celebration Cake had the proper frosting/fillings for letter "K". The Godiva cake had the proper fillings for "L", but we also tried other fillings with "Y" and "A". We had our favorite chocolate frostings that we included: cocoa frosting and sour cream frosting(SC). The day of the event, when I arrived at Jenny's house with my two cakes, frostings, ballots and toothpicks, Jenny told me about the interloper. Some friend of Debbie & Jenny's from high school was in town and he loves cake and Debbie told him about our little taste test and he wanted to come so she said 'sure!" I was peeved! Not so much that he was coming (just one more plate of 12 pieces of cake, ugh) but he WAS BRINGING HIS OWN CAKE TO ENTER. As if this was a contest. Nooooooo!!!! We had already printed the ballots, made the toothpick labels, made a huge mess of Jenny's kitchen and I just said, 'no.' He can come, he can bring his blasted cake, I don't care, but he isn't entering it. If people want to comment on his cake, fine. But this is a scientific study on home made chocolate cake! The interloper was bringing a doctored box cake mix! With doctored box pudding filling! Blasphemy!

My friends made me proud. Especially my then boyfriend (now husband), MJM. His ability to discern the merits of each cake and frosting combo was to be admired. And Minh and Matt did a bang-up job judging, too. Honestly, after days of chocolate cake baking and frosting making, and bowl-licking and crumb munching I could barely tell the difference. I was overwhelmed, but tried my best to rate each one both in terms of flavor and texture for both the cake and the frosting. Poor Jenny couldn't even fill in the ballot. We were exhausted!

MLG (me) on the left (notice how everything is mostly 8s and 9s) and Jenny's ballot on the right.

MJM on the left and JAS (Jeff) on the right

Minh on the left and Matt on the right

What's his name on the left and Debbie on the right

Mark on the left and Interloper on the right

My initial plan was to do statistical analysis in Matlab on the results to determine the winner. Unfortunately, that meant a delay, which was deemed unacceptable by the crowd. So we leafed through the ballots... I found it interesting that the frosting or topping really affected the perception of the cake! Consider Jeff's ballot (the only one that really mattered, after all). "W" "E" "S" and "V" were all the same cake- Black Magic cake, but the different letters had different frostings. However, he gave W a perfect 10 and E got a 9 and 8, S got two 8s and E- two 6s!! But I'm sure the only thing you care about is what was decided! Which cake was the winner!? The consensus winner was "W": a combination of 'Black Magic Cake' on Hershey's website and 'Cocoa Frosting' from the Belimar book (a book our friend, Belimar recommended), The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Book of Desserts. A great book, check it out.

But most importantly, what we learned from this experience was: be careful what you wish for. Maybe it wont sound surprising to you, but Jeff actually requested a non-chocolate cake for his birthday that year.