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Posts tagged ‘Chocolate Cakeoff’

Feb 14

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All you need is love…

(I wrote this post last night.  All I need is time.  Has it really been over a month since I posted? Fuuuuuuuuuuudgey cupcakes.  Guess Valentine’s Day is as good an excuse to come back as any.)

When it comes to classical music I have always been a girl for the romantic composers.  When I say romantic, I don’t mean love, I mean the movement.  There is definitely a sense of romance in the works but it’s a sad sort of feeling that only strings and piano can convey.

Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn and Chopin all wrote such beautiful, and often times heartbreakingly sad sweet songs.  Tchaikovsky was a bit separated of course due to the nationalist movement of his Russian mother country so I’m not sure how much he gets classified as a romantic by actual musical theorists.  If you are writing a paper on the man please don’t take my ramblings here for expert testimony.

I think that the average person today gets exposed to contemporary instrumental pieces through film scores.  There are some amazing people out there doing things I love too.  For example Murray Gold IS the essential player to the success of Doctor Who.  You can lose the writers, the actors but if you lose Gold the show will never be the same.  There’s also Hans Zimmer (Nolan’s Batman films, The Lion King, Inception), John Williams (Uh ever heard of Star Wars), John Murphy (Sunshine Adagio In D Minor trust me you’ve heard it) and Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings)

Pandora might be changing that.  At least it did for me.  I just found Brian Crain a modern composer whose music captures the same love affair of piano and strings I have always associated with my romantic loves.  I knew there would be a connection when I saw he has an entire album dedicated to “Piano and Light”  There is a sadness to some of his work but it’s unusual for me in that it seems to have a lighter, sweeter tone to it a lot of the time.  Especially Song for Sienna, which you really need to listen to, like, now. Initially the internets said this song was part of a movie score in Love Actually so I guess it is especially appropriate I blog about it today on Valentine’s Day.  Upon further investigation I have not found this to be true according to the soundtrack / score listings online.

So if you can convince your guy (or gal) to watch Love Actually today, here is a great way to spend your evening.  Watch a sappy British romance film, because British is always awesome, bake up some Chocolate Chiffon Cupcakes with Pretzel Love Buttons and be on the lookout (or listenout) for this amazing musical piece by Brian Crain.  Let me know if you can find it in the film after all.

Chocolate Chiffon Cupcakes Read more

Oct 4

Blackout Cake-18
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Don’t go Bakin’ my Heart

I’m convinced this cake is why my boyfriend, “Peter Parker”, is dating me.  Now it could be my awesome dog (“IT totally is the dog”–Boyfriend), my impressive stint as a one-time extra, shared interests or ya know my personality but I’m still convinced this cake is what won his heart.

It’s that good.  The devil’s food cake portion is fluffy but rich with pockets of chocolate from the chips.  The frosting is marshmallow fluffy goodness and on the outside?  Crumbs from a fourth layer patched against the sides.  Cake, frosting, cake and not a single mouthful less delicious than the first.

The night we finally “got together” so to speak I was going to a party and decided to bring something.  Not boozamahol, everyone brings that.  Instead I had a cake sitting on the counter that I desperately needed to get rid of so I wouldn’t accidentally the whole thing.  I grabbed it and ran out the door to get into the car that was picking me up.  Boyfriend was sitting in the passenger seat and I handed the cake off to him while climbing into the back.  I never got the damn thing back.  Well okay, I did, but he ate a significant portion of it.  It’s been a little over four months and we just went to a party thrown by the same group of people.  The ones who remembered me, remembered because of the cake and asked why I didn’t bring another one.

So here are two life lessons:

1) This cake will make people fall in love with you.
2) This cake will make people REMEMBER that you brought a cake and expect more in the future.

With great cake comes great responsibility (and a larger waistband). Read more

Jul 16

Chocolate Caramelava Cake

Well I didn’t get the dream job with the big biotech company.  Someone with more lab experience got to move forward with my perfect-oh-my-god-this-place-is-awesome future and I’m left to be moody and sullen for a day or two.  I know the fact that I made it into the final round (4 people out of 150) is supposed to be a good thing but it doesn’t change the outcome anymore than if I’d never had my resume selected out of the stack.  In the end I didn’t get the job and nothing can keep the suckage of that fact from sucking.  Normally I keep my hopes in check but sometimes…well this sums it up just about right:

Marilla Cuthbert: You set your heart too much on frivolous things and then crash down into despair when you don’t get them.
Anne Shirley: I know. I can’t help flying up on the wings of anticipation. It’s as glorious as soaring through a sunset… almost pays for the thud.

Almost being the key word in that statement.  In any case it’s the perfect reason to move forward with the Chocolate Cake search.  Good old phenethylamine is exactly what I need.  It’s a mood elevator and why women who are PMSing, mad, sad, moody or just in any old general thunk like a big bite of chocolatey goodness. Read more

May 9

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Did you thank your mother today?

If you haven’t it’s not too late!  Take mom out for a fancy meal – bake mommy something sweet – give grandmama a giant hug – rub your mother’s feet!  I started early by taking my mom out for cocktails Saturday night because I’m finally old enough to do so.

If you need a deliciously adorable idea try these Mayo Butterfly Cupcakes!  This is part 3 of the Chocolate Cakeoff and it is a delightful, homey option when making cake batter.  The result had a mild metallic aftertaste to me but my family didn’t notice.  I will say the batter is delectable and 100% safe to eat which probably makes this the winning batter of all time in my book.  Mayo is essentially eggs and oil…the two things you’ll notice are missing from this recipe.  I’d really like to know if this would work with Veganase because that would be just the dandiest thing ever (I’m using a lot of positive D words today) for my vegan friends! Read more

Mar 28

A Cake that’s hip to the Beet (Chocolate Cakeoff #2)

Phase 2 in the chocolate cake-off (before passover starts) and I have to say I have mixed feelings about this cake.  First of all the recipe asks for beets, yes you read that correctly, beets!  So grating three of those left my arm feeling a bit tired.  Then when I was baking the cakes they exploded outside the pans far more than I expected them to.  As they cooled they compacted back down too so I was annoyed that I’d gotten a mess all over my oven for very little height as a tradeoff.

Then I tasted the cake.  It is both amazing and a little odd.  I can definitely pick out the flavor of the beets but they don’t make the cake taste bad…just a little different.  The cake itself is unbelievably moist.  I’m talking 3 days later after leaving it out on the counter it still has a very soft texture and isn’t dry at all.  Applies itself very well for frosting (though the swiss merginue buttercream I tried out was a bit strange.  My design on the cake is a bit childish.  I clearly need more practice at this part)  I don’t know that I’d call this the ultimate chocolate cake but if you want a forgiving recipe that you can make ahead of time and freeze/decorate this is where I’d go.

Devil’s Food Cake Layers

Replicated faithfully from “The Professional Pastry Chef”

  • 570 g granulated white sugar (I used 450g and it was sweet enough)
  • 115 g unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 225 g bread flour
  • 225 g cake four
  • 8g (2tsp) baking soda
  • 8g (2tsp) baking powder
  • 6 eggs
  • 480 ml buttermilk
  • 480 ml sour cream
  • 340 g melted butter
  • 225 g finely grated purple beets

Prepare your cake pans and preheat the oven to 350F.  Sift together the dry goods (sugar, cocoa, flours and bp/bs) in a large bowl.  An easy way to sift these goods is to run them through a few pulses in a food processor.

Beat the eggs, adding them to the bowl one at a time, for up to 2 minutes.  In a separate bowl mix the sour cream and buttermilk.  Alternate between adding the liquid goods and the dried goods to the eggs until the entire mixture is smooth and combined.  Mix in the melted butter and the grated beets.  Your batter is going to be hot pink!

Divide the batter between the pans and smooth cakes to level.  Do not add more than half the volume the pan holds, the cake will explode over the edges if you follow the 2/3rds rule.  I learned this the hard way. Bake for approximately 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out smooth.

Mar 13

Devil in my Kitchen (Chocolate Cakeoff #1)

It is freakishly hot in my apartment right now. I know that’s partly my fault for baking chocolate cake but it is really, really freakishly hot. Maybe it’s because it’s been cold and rainy so the heat seems especially pronounced, but I feel like I should be doing bikram yoga right now. I’ll definitely need to after trying out the CIA’s Devil’s Food Cake recipe.Cake!

The CIA as in the Culinary Institute of America mind you, I don’t think the Central Intelligence Agency has their own cake recipe…. I’m working my way through trying out different chocolate cake recipes and this is my first. I’ll be sure to post several more over the next few days while determining which of the 55 books in my cooking library has the best chocolate cake recipe. One recipe uses beets! I’m going to need quite a few people to help me out with this though so I’ll need volunteers to be cake eaters. (Cake Eater: this is also a slang term, commonly used by Hockey players that may have originated in Minnesota*?* It’s supposed to apply to bourgeoisie white players who believe they are “superior” to others; they eat cake because they are wealthy. Obviously I’m not using it in this capacity.)

Cake!Devil’s Food Cake isn’t just a traditional chocolate cake recipe. I’d gather from the term it’s supposed to be related to Angel’s Food Cake which is a yellow, airy cake typically prepared without any fat. Devil’s conversely is NOT fat free but it does have a few distinguishing characteristics that make it different from run of the mill chocolate cake–well as if there were such a thing. Cocoa powder is typically used rather than melted chocolate in Devil’s Food in order to preserve lightness while still bringing a lot of moisture to the party.   It also seems to be that most recipes favor baking soda over baking powder.  Some recipes minimize the number of eggs while some go egg crazy, like the one I’m about to evaluate, but all tend to be very simple.

Okay and I lied a second ago when I said from ALL my books. I have two books dedicated entirely to chocolate so doing every cake recipe they offer would be insane. Yes two books about chocolate; I have ovaries okay? Anyway I’m looking for the perfect, pure chocolate cake recipe. No nuts, no fruit and no almond chocolate gâteau. Just the perfect go-to chocolate cake recipe that I can doctor up for any and all occasions.

The CIA recipe is written out to make 6 cakes. SIX round cakes 8″ in diameter. It also happens to be written in metric and is quite simple to scale down so I only made two. I assembled these and am planning on donating them later today to my sorority’s study party because it’s finals again.

What about the results?  Well this cake recipe had an obscene amount of sugar and it came out quite sweet and not as deep in chocolate favor as I’d like.  I do admit that is likely my fault as I ran out of cocoa powder (dreadful way to begin this experiment) and used a little over half what the recipe called for.  Even so I can’t help but think that if the amount of sugar was cut in half, so could be the chocolate and the flavor overall would be just as good.  The crumb was great!  The cake slipped out of the pans nicely and it definitely is both moist and dense while maintaining light crumb.  As it cooled the cake definitely got more dense so in the future if using this recipe you might want to turn it into 4 layer (by cutting each individual cake in half) rather than 2.  I was just lazy.

Devil’s Food CakeCake!
scaled down from “Baking and Pastry” by the CIA

  • 573g White Granulated Sugar
  • 350g Cake Flour
  • 11.5g Baking Soda
  • 2.5g Baking Powder
  • 226g eggs (or roughly 4 large)
  • 236g butter, melted, warm
  • 500mL water 250mL
  • 10mL vanilla extract
  • 141.5g cocoa powder 80g

The values in red are the actual numbers I used in prepping these cakes.  I found out that I was out of cocoa powder last night and the batter seemed too thin for any extra water.

Preheat the oven to 350F and prep 2 round 8″ cake pans.

First mix together the flour, sugar, baking soda and baking powder.  Make sure your flour is sifted nicely.  An easy way to do this is to pulse the mix in a food processor a couple of times.  It’s much faster than using a hand sifter and cleaner too.

Beat the eggs until fluffy, lower the speed on your mixer and incorporate the butter.  Then add the dry mix alternatively with the water.  I was tempted to substitute in buttermilk here but the point of this experiment is to be as accurate to the recipes I’m testing as possible.  Another day perhaps.  Finally add the cocoa and vanilla.

In retrospect I see no reason why you can’t add the cocoa in with the dry goods unless you want to be able to control how chocolatey the batter is.  I ended up pouring about 775grams into each pan.  A lot gets lost both in the mixing process and on the executive Chef’s tasting spoon.  As it was this was just the right amount to get rise without the cakes spilling over during baking.

Bake for ~45 minutes and/or until a toothpick comes out of the cakes smoothly without batter clinging to it.

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