Chocolate cake with chocolate icing has always been my favorite cake flavor combination. Imagine how excited I was when I found out that an Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake was one of the choices for the Cake Slice Bakers for June. A grand chocolate layer cake! What could be better?
There were a few new techniques which took it out of the old-fashioned category in my mind, but the trick of making a sort of pudding for the chocolate part of the cake, by cooking the cocoa, chocolate and water together, then cooling it before adding it to the batter, was one I will use again. It seemed to make for a very moist cake with a tender but firm crumb. Buy or borrow the book and check out this cool technique!
The second non-old-fashioned thing was making the frosting in a food processor. Since mine was unavailable when I made the frosting, I used the exact same ingredients called for, but put them together in a different manner. I creamed two sticks of butter in the bowl of my stand mixer, added the cocoa and slowly beat it to make a paste, very slowly added the salt and confectioners sugar keeping the stand mixer on low speed, then added the vanilla and corn syrup and mixed them in. Once the chocolate mixture was cool enough I added it with the mixer on low and once that was incorporated I added the remaining butter, a tablespoon at a time. Once all the butter was incorporated, I turned up the speed for about a minute to completely mix the frosting. Of course there was a lot of scraping the sides of the bowl and the beaters throughout the process.
The frosting was creamy but didn't seem to get to filled with air and it was easy to work with when I applied it to the cake layers. I used the back of the spoon method to put swirls on the top of the cake, then used a pastry bag and tip to use some more frosting to decorate the bottom with flowers, with one in the middle of the top.
The resulting layer cake was lovely to look at and delicious, but I found it overly rich. (I write 'butter' but really used non-dairy margarine since I can't tolerate butter. Maybe real butter would have been less rich, but I doubt it.) Fortunately we were able to share this delightful cake with neighbors (who proclaimed it perfect for breakfast!), and with my sister and her family. Thin slices worked out well.
I decorated the final slice with strawberries from our garden. Celebrating summer!
Next time I would do a ganache icing or the really old fashioned one with cocoa, hot milk and confectioners sugar, both of which would probably be less rich than the Test Kitchen chocolate frosting. I wouldn't change a thing about the cake itself. I baked the layers two full days before I frosted and served it and the cake layers stayed moist just wrapped in plastic and stored at room temperature. This is a wonderful cake, but it is expensive to make if you use (as you should) high quality chocolate and cocoa. Use a chocolate that you enjoy eating since you will really taste it. I used Scharfenberger and was glad I did.
Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through. This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake. We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!
Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.
The choices this month were Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake, Rhubarb Ribbon Cake, Lavender Tea Cakes with Vanilla Glaze, and Summer Peach Cake.
The Cake Slice Bakers are baking from a new book "The Perfect Cake" from America's Test Kitchen.
Our choices this month are...
June 2018
Our choices this month are...
June 2018
- Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake
- Rhubarb Ribbon Cake
- Lavender Tea Cakes with Vanilla Glaze
- Summer Peach Cake
Visit our bakers too see what choice they baked up!
Looks great and I like the strawberries on the side!
ReplyDeleteElle I need some lessons from you on how to get perfect layers in my cakes. Yours is truly a thing of beauty.
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