Chocolate Bundt Cake for 3rd Birthday

My son's 3rd birthday was in the beginning of November. I was planning to make the Milk Bar Birthday Cake, and even had all of the ingredients. Unfortunately, I had a fibromyalgia flare, which causes pain and fatigue. And . . . I went with a mix!

A while ago, my church had a chocolate cake Bake-Off, and I and my Chocolate Sour Cream Cake came in second. The first place winner was the Chocolate Cavity-Maker Cake, which uses a mix. It seemed a great choice for my sons birthday cake, especially after I found this Number Three Cake made from 2 Bundts.

It's a very easy cake.

I put in my mixer bowl one chocolate cake mix, one 4 ounce chocolate pudding mix, 8 ounces of sour cream, and 3 eggs.

I added ⅓

I added 1/3 cup vegetable oil and 1/2 cup water (the recipe calls for coffee flavored liqueur) and mixed until smooth.

Then I mixed in 12 ounces or 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips. It was a very nice, thick batter.

I sprayed my Bundt pan very thoroughly with Baker's Secret flour and oil spray, which has given me the most success with Bundt pans. It transferred the batter to the pan and smoothed it out a bit.

I baked the cake at 350 and checked it after 50 minutes, though it ultimately took 70 minutes. The cake should be damp in the middle. I cooled the cake completely, turning it out onto a rack after 15 minutes.

The next day I repeated the whole process.

After both cakes were cool, I cut and arranged them into the shape of he number 3.

 

As you can tell from the crumb coat (American buttercream), the cake was difficult to ice, which I think is a feature of cakes from a mix. If it wasn't for a birthday, I would serve it without icing, as it was sweet enough as it is.

I decorated with sprinkles and everyone was really happy with the cake. I personally ate the un-iced bits I had cut out to make the 3.

It was a good lesson for me, and reminded me that cake mixes exist for a reason.

On a personal note, I'm going to try to get back into blogging. My mothers cancer seems to be completely gone, and I'm feeling interested in cooking and writing again.

 

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Minecraft Cake

One year ago, I started taking cake decorating lessons to learn to make birthday cakes for my kids. Here's Liam's eight birthday cake

Minecraft is a computer game based on building a world of cubes. I liked the idea of a landscape cake, and saw some cakes on Instrucables (here and here) that used Rice Krispy Treats for the sand blocks, and iced cake for the grass blocks. Both my cake and my Rice Krispy Treats came out approximately 3 centimeters high, so I used 3 cm as my unit length. The smallest cube is 3 cm by 3 cm and every length is an even multiple of 3 cm.

For the cake I used the Chocolate Sour Cream Cake recipe and my American Buttercream recipe. For the Rice Krispy Treats I used a double recipe from ATK Quick Family Cookbook (associate link). For the water I used Wilton piping gel tinted blue over a trimmed Rice Krispy Treat, but you could also use blue gel icing. The base is a scalloped half sheet board I picked up somewhere.

I used American buttercream tinted green to glue the cake layers together. I made the grass topping using tip 233, the famous grass tip. It was very hard on my hands. Also, the grass did not provide a thick icing layer, a minor disappointment to some of the kids.

The kids, and my son, loved the cake. When it was time to cut the cake, I was swarmed by kids who wanted a piece of each: grass, sand, and water.

 

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Banana Cake with Chocolate Peanut Butter Ganache

I've wanted to make a chocolate peanut butter cake for a while, but I've only seen a few peanut butter mousse recipes. In Rose's Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Berenbaum, she has a recipe for chocolate peanut butter ganache. During my water yoga class, I had a flash of inspiration: bananas, peanut butter, and chocolate.

I've made one Momofuku Milk Bar inspired cake before: the Pumpkin Pie Cake. I was scared of cutting out layers from a sheet cake, so I make them in regular cake pans. I also was a little concerned about the declared difficulty of Christina Tosi's cake recipes.

Shannon of A Periodic Table to the rescue! She did a fabulous tutorial for the Apple Pie Layer Cake, and I felt much more confident after reading it.

I made the banana cake from Milk Bar. The recipe warns of a difficult emulsion (most batters are emulsions, which is why you add ingredients to them slowly and in a specific order), but it came together fine. If you are new to Milk Bar, I would suggest making the Corn Cookies or Compost Cookies first, as those recipies will help acquaint you with Christina Tosi's techniques.

Tosi pairs her banana cake with gianduja, an Italian chocolate hazelnut candy, or upscale Nutella. I went decidedly more American with a Chocolate Peanut Butter Ganache and a cut up Heath Bar.

I still don't have the 6-inch cake rings, so I assembled the cake in a 6 by 2-inch round cake pan. I reused the acetate collars given to me by the Wegman's bakery.

I was a little worried about removing the cake from a pan without a removable bottom. I let the cake set up in the freezer for about 20 minutes; the ganache completely hardened and the cake tipped out without any difficulty.

I'm enjoying this method of layering cakes and fillings, and my family enjoys eating the cakes. I see lots more in my future!

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A Gum Paste Rose for Valentine's Day

This is a gum paste rose on a chocolate-chocolate cake for Valentine's Day. I made the rose in the second class of my Wilton Fondant and Gum Paste class.

I left the side naked, as I liked the look. I was partially inspired by the Tomboy cakes from the Miette cookbook (associate link). They are just beautiful, and mine aren't nearly as pretty. I went a little heavier on the frosting in between the layers, to try for the same total amount of frosting, but didn't get it quite even.

I emailed all the women in my church, trying to find someone who had an event I could make the final cake for. I found an event (which I can not yet discuss), and in the process, I found people who wanted cakes for other occasions. I will have a busy month :-)

I'm most enjoying the process of trying to find my voice in cake design. I make what I believe are called Dessert Cakes, as contrasted to Theme Cakes or Wedding Cakes. My first priority is flavor. This does compromise the appearance, as my very soft cakes cannot be carved or support fondant. Both of these techniques require a finer-textured, firm cake. And lots of buttercream icing would violate the flavor balance of my cakes. My husband reminds me to keep my focus as I look at the many beautiful cakes on Cake Central, books, and blogs.

When I did my taxes this year, I declared my profession as home-maker, but I'm starting to tell people as I'm introduced to them that I'm a baker and blogger. This is so, so much fun!

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Fudge Frosting

This is a new, original chocolate frosting recipe I am very happy with. I made it by accident when I ran out of powdered sugar, but I liked it so much that I used it on my own birthday cake.

The flavor comes from cocoa. I used mostly the Scharffen Berger Natural, topped off with some Hershey Special Dark. Good cocoa is expensive!

I wanted the same yield as my American Buttercream recipe, but with a different ratio of ingredients.

I started by creaming 12 ounces or 3 sticks of very soft salted butter. I then added an equal weight of shortening and mixed them together. You can see that, by creaming the butter first, I have eliminated the butter lumps I previously struggled with. I also here mixed in 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

I next measured and sifted 6½ ounces of cocoa. I measure directly into my "sifter." Cocoa is so fatty that it has lumps if I don't sift it.

I mixed 1½ pounds powdered sugar and the cocoa into the butter, a little at a time. When the sugar was almost all in, I mixed in 2 tablespoons meringue powder, which is optional. Finally I added about 2 tablespoons milk to smooth it out.

The final frosting is a lot softer than the American Buttercream. Most significantly, it doesn't crust, so you can use the Viva trick to get it very smooth. I really prefer the flavor.

I'm using a Chocolate Sour Cream Cake, baked in three layers.

I'm going to demonstrate how I use the icer tip. Warning: this is my first video.

I'm using a 16" reusable Wilton Bad with the end cut to fit the icer tip.

After the bag is filled, I twist the end closed, like a bread bag,

Then I tuck the end under, where its secured in my hand.

I pipe with my right hand, while spinning the turntable with my left. This makes icing application much easier.

Moving right along, this is what happens when you don't level the tops of your cakes. I use the wedge shape of the icer bag to fill in the gaps, then frost the sides.

The frosted cake.

The final birthday cake, after my son helps me with the sprinkles.

It was wonderful, but a little overwhelming, with the chocolate, butter, and sugar, which is what I wanted :-) I gave the leftovers to the local Missionaries already, which makes me a little sad.

Chocolate Fudge Frosting

Makes enough frosting for a 9" 3-layer cake.

12 ounces or 3 sticks salted butter

11 ounces or 1½ cups vegetable shortening

1 tsp vanilla extract

1½ lbs or 5 cups unsifted confectioners' sugar

6½ ounces or 2½ cups good cocoa, natural or Dutch processed, sifted after measuring

2 tbsp meringue powder, optional

2-4 tbsp milk, cream, or water

Beat butter in mixer until smooth. Beat in shortening, then the vanilla extract.

Add powdered sugar, a cup at a time, then the cocoa, while the mixer is on low. Mix in the meringue powder.

Add enough milk to smooth out the frosting. Add less for a stiff consistancy frosting, more for soft.

 

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Chocolate Cake Taste Test, Update

Picture from Wikipedia

My husband and I have done some very challenging further research on chocolate cakes, and we have come to some conclusions. Please keep in mind that these are opinions.

The Chocolate Sour Cream Cake is moist, and not too sweet. It is perfect for eating with chocolate frosting, which is my favorite way to eat chocolate cake. Don't forget the glass of milk.

The Chocolate Butter Cake is flavorful, and has a finer crumb. I will probably use it for a German Chocolate Cake or with a chocolate mousse filling. I hate coconut flakes, but German Chocolate is my Dad's favorite, so I make it for him and scrape off the filling.

I have two birthdays coming up, so I see more cakes in my future. I hope you are safe after the hurricane, and had a safe and fun Halloween.

11/12/2012—updated to clarify picture source

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Chocolate Cake Taste Test

I have been planning a taste test of chocolate cakes for a while. I was feeling a little stir crazy last week, so I started baking, and baking, and baking.

I tried to have a diverse selection of chocolate cakes. All used cocoa, though the ATK recipe used unsweetened chocolate as well. I had a wide variety of mixing methods as well. I did not try to isolate variables; I just used recommended recipes as they are.

I made 6 cakes in 9 by 13-inch pans. I frosted each with American Buttercream, without the almond extract. Each frosting was tinted a different color so I could keep track of the different cakes. Eight of my friends and family had a small piece of each cake, served with seltzer as a palate cleanser. Most rated each cake 1-5 and some gave comments as well.

The test ended up being double-blind, as I had forgotten which cakes were which. I'll start with the winners.

I was initially prejudiced against the Chocolate Butter Cake from Cookie Madness; I thought all-butter cakes were inevitably dry. I included it in the test only because I was seduced by the picture and description. The butter cake ended up being one of the two winners. The flavor was amazing. The texture was more fine-grained and velvety than stick-to-your-fork moist. The mixing method is the paste method, where the butter and flour are combined first.

The other winner was the Chocolate Sour Cream Cake. It had awesome flavor, of course, but a slightly coarser and perhaps more moist crumb. I want to point out that no two people agreed on what was moist and what was dry, so it's very subjective. It is made by whipping the eggs and sugar until light, then stirring in the sour cream and vegetable oil.

Of these two winners, everyone loved one or the other—I loved both. Even those who had a different favorite rated one of these two very highly.

None of the other cakes was bad, and all had their strong points. As my Dad said, "I would eat any one of these."

The KAF Chocolate Cake was the most well behaved. If I were learning to bake, I would use this guaranteed recipe with its very clear directions. It also was the most attractive and came out of the pan best. It has a milk chocolate rather than dark chocolate flavor.

The Deep Dark Chocolate Cake from Hershey's was the easiest to make and had a good, dark flavor. One of the tasters thought it was slightly bitter even. It is simply stirred in one bowl.

The BakeWise version of the Deep Dark Chocolate Cake was definitely the most dense. I thought it was almost a brownie. It was a little trickier to make though.

The Old Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake from ATK had cocoa and unsweetened chocolate. Its taste was distinctive, probably because of the chocolate. It whipped the eggs and sugar first, like the sour cream cake.

I will make the butter and sour cream cakes a couple more times, to figure out which I prefer and to make any changes.

Note: my update and final conclusions are here.

 

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Chocolate Cakes Compared, by the numbers

I previously wrote a post comparing yellow cakes numerically. I enjoyed writing it, and it helped me with my baking.

I am trying to find a chocolate cake recipe I like. I have a very specific ultimate chocolate cake in my head. Luckily I've found a picture of it for those of you without remote telepathy. I'd like to find it without making more than maybe four cakes. Yes, I know there's a recipe with the picture, but I'm not willing to trust it.

So once again, I rounded up several cake recipes from my usual sources, plus a couple that are really popular.

I indulged a couple of prejudices in selecting the recipes. I only selected recipes that use cocoa, and not chocolate. Also, I excluded recipes that use sour cream, mostly because I don't know how to account for its behavior in the cake.

I included different categories in this table, based on the similarities of the recipies. I've simplified by converting all ingredients to ounces using the KAF Weight Chart. As previously, I adjusted each recipe to make the same size cake, based on the amount of flour.

Recipe	Flour	Cocoa	Fat	Sugar	Liquid	Yolks	Whites
Cake Bible Butter	10	2.7	7.8	12.7	9.7	3	3
Cake Bible Fudge	10	2.9	6.1	13.3	11.4	2.9	2.9
Cake Bible Devil	10	2.5	7.8	12.9	9.8	3.3	3.3
KAF Chocolate	10	2.3	5.8	12.7	12.5	4.2	4.2
KAF Fudge	10	2.6	6	16	11.4	4.6	4.6
ATK Velvet	10	2.4	7.7	14	12.8	3.2	3.2
Hershey	10	2.6	4	16	9.1	2.3	2.3
BakeWise	10	2.8	8.9	24.4	12.7	2.5	7.6
Suzanne's	10	2.3	5.2	12.4	10	3.3	3.3
Cookie Madness	10	3.8	8	17.5	20	2.5	2.5

Let's see. Sweetest: BakeWise (by a mile). Most Chocolate: Cookie Madness. Richest: BakeWise. Wettest: Cookie Madness. I don't think I can draw any conclusions though.

I think I see another taste test in my future!

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Chocolate Turtle Cheesecake

A different post today. I'm having my kitchen redone (God bless you, Landlord!), so I made this cake at my father's house. Dad bakes bread and has a very, very cool kitchen. But, I was flustered by not knowing where anything was, so I don't have many pictures.

This cake is for my friend Alysia, whose birthday was Saturday. Her family has a lot of July birthdays, so she asked about a cheesecake instead of a traditional birthday cake. After some discussion, she said that she likes New York-style cheesecakes and the Turtle flavor combination–chocolate, caramel, and pecan.

My inspiration is this beautiful Turtle Cheesecake by Miss Patti at Cake Central.

I'll write about the cheesecake later–today I'm focusing on the elements that make it Turtle.

This blog is all about challenging myself (and becoming rich and famous), so I wanted to make the caramel and chocolate sauces. I used the recipes from The Family Baking Book from ATK.

Dad has a very high BTU cooktop and Le Creuset pots. They have a white lining that makes it very easy to see the color of the caramel. *sigh*

The failed caramel

I hash to throw away my first batch of caramel, as I didn't read the friggin' directions. We live, and, hopefully, we learn.

I put enough water in the pan to cover the bottom, the added 7 ounces or 1 cup of sugar to the middle. I then heated the pan over medium-high without stirring until the syrup was light amber.

I then lowered the heat to medium-low and cooked until it was the color I wanted. I removed the pan from heat and very slowly whisked in 1 cup heavy cream. The first failure was mostly from not adding the cream slowely. Finally, I stirred in lemon juice, vanilla, and a pinch of salt. I have a new-found love of caramel.

I made the chocolate sauce later in my gutted kitchen. It was very simple–I just heated cream and stirred in chopped chocolate and a little corn syrup off heat.

Now we come to the fun part–squeeze bottles! I feel so fancy. I decorated the cheesecake on my kitchen table, in the middle of my living room, while distracting my children with Sid the Science Kid.

I tried doing a layered grid like the inspiration photo, but the relative viscosities of the sauces fought me. I ended up flooding the cheesecake with caramel and decorating with chocolate sauce.

The caramel tasted much too good to leave it at that, so I covered the sides in caramel also. Some chopped pecans, et violà!

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Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

I have a very sneaky strategy for how to improve my baking and have cakes to write about. I look in my church newsletter for upcoming birthdays. Next I pick someone I know (I'm pretty new to the church), then I ask if I can bake him or her a birthday cake. It's working pretty well so far.

I asked Leah what kind of cake she likes, and her answer was "It's all about the frosting . . . cream cheese frosting!" There was a brief mention of Red Velvet Cake, but I ignored that. I'm from Maryland, where Red Velvet has always been a regional specialty, and I KNOW that you only use boiled milk frosting on Red Velvet. The rest of the country just has it wrong.

I mentioned some other kinds of cake I would be willing to put cream cheese frosting on, and Leah decided on chocolate. I can definitely live with that :-)

I planned to bake the cake late at night when it wouldn't be so hot, then decorate it the next day. Alas, I discovered Lost on Netflix, and the cake did not get baked when I'd planned. I did have a full day left to bake and decorate though, and had a lot of fun in the process.

I used recipes from King Arthur Flour for the cake and cream cheese frosting. I used an adapted Wilton American buttercream recipe for the decorations, as I was concerned with piping the cream cheese frosting.

King Arthur Flour (KAF) has a recipe section on their website, and within that a collection of recipes called Favorite Classics. These recipes are described as "KAF Guaranteed", and they are rock solid. KAF is not the only source of exhaustively tested recipes. America's Test Kitchen (which publishes Cooks Illustrated and Cooks Country) is an obsessive tester, and I have also found very well tested recipes in Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible and Shirley Corriher's BakeWise.

What appeals to me in the KAF Guaranteed recipes is the predictability of their taste. Cooks Illustrated expects one to grind peanuts for the most peanuty Peanut Butter Cookies you can imagine, which are very good. KAF uses peanut butter alone, and you end up with cookies that taste as you expect them to, but better. I guess I'm saying that KAF recipes have a very broad appeal, which is exactly what I want as a starting point.

I made the simple Chocolate Cake. This recipe uses the paste or reverse creaming method, where the fat is mixed with the flour instead of being creamed with the sugar. I find it more predictable than creaming.

I used my digital scale to weigh the dry ingredients, which I highly recommend. I learned to measure like this in a bakery where I worked.

I put my mixer bowl on the scale and pressed the Tare button to set the weight to zero. This can also be called zeroing. I added the specified weight of flour, then pressed Tare again, and the scale was again reset to zero. I then measured the sugar right over the flour, and the scale only measured the amount of sugar I've added. I Tared the scale one more time, then added the cocoa.

I made a mistake here, and didn't sift my cocoa. My sifter is not really a sifter, but a fine mesh strainer, and my strainer was dirty. Cocoa, being a fine solid and a fat, clumps easily and persistent. It ended up being a lot of work to break up the cocoa with a whisk and my fingers, and I still would have done a better job with the sifter.

I added the leavening and salt and started the mixer with the whisk attachment to mix the dry ingredients. I then switched to the paddle and mixed in my very soft butter and oil.

I'd forgotten set my eggs out, so I put them in a bowl of hot water at this point. I put the bowl under a trickle of hot water from the tap to add some circulation.

I microwaved the milk for 60 seconds, which made it pretty hot, then added cold water from the refrigerator to bring the average temperature to lukewarm. Then I added the vanilla. I generally use artificial vanilla in baked goods and real vanilla extract in uncooked applications. All the liquid went in the mixer at once and was mixed. The eggs were then warm, so I added them as directed. Like many reverse-creamed cakes, the batter was very thin.

I prepared the pans with flour-oil spray and parchment rounds. The precut rounds are really handy if you're going to bake a lot of cakes.

The KAF recipe specifies the weight of the batter that goes in each pan, and it came out perfectly :-)

My father is very excited about the blog, so he bought me some Cake Strips (as well as the parchment rounds, and loaned me the cake pans. Thanks, Dad!). You can see how well they worked.

While the cakes cooled I made a double recipe of Cream Cheese Frosting. I learned in cake decorating class to always make more frosting than you think you will need. I mixed the room-temperature cream cheese to soften it, then mixed in the butter and real vanilla extract.

Based on my experience, I added the powdered sugar all at once. In my class we were told to buy 2 pound bags of Dominos pure powdered sugar, the amount needed for a double recipe of frosting, so we wouldn't have to measure. I started the mixer at the lowest speed to avoid recreating the set of Scarface (not that I've seen it), then increased the speed just a bit.

At this point the frosting looks terrible and my mixer is straining. I added milk, a tablespoon at a time, until it smoothed out.

I also made a buttercream, a recipe I will write about at another time.

To turn the cakes out of the pans, I put parchment circles on top of each cake, sandwiched the pan between two wire racks, and flipped them. I flipped them again and leveled the cakes. As noted before, they were already pretty level, but I wanted to be extra careful. Plus, the cake tops with some leftover frosting make a wonderful treat for the baker :-)

I spread some frosting on a 10-inch cake round to anchor the cake, and placed the first layer, cut side down. I frosted generously (it's all about the icing, remember?) then placed the second layer, again cut side down. I did this because it is almost impossible to frost the cut side of a cake without a lot of crumbs in the icing. After frosting the whole cake generously, I put it in the refrigerator to set.

I worked on the decorations next. I was planning to make some daffodils (thus the yellow), but I quickly learned that one should not try to make ambitious buttercream flowers in the dead of summer. So I went to my favorite and most successful flower, the rosette.

After I finished the rosettes I pulled the cake from the fridge and made handwriting guide lines with a pizza cutter, as well as a center line. I already knew from playing around that the middle of Happy Birthday falls in the middle of the first P and between the T and the H., so I started with those letters and worked out. Leah is a pretty easy name to center :-)

I placed the rosettes as evenly as I could and connected them with squiggles, then piped a simple line-and-dots bottom border.

Leah was happy with the cake AND she picked it up, so I didn't have to worry about delivering it without sliding!

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