mix, mix…stir, stir

The most important thing to establish about this cake is that you don’t need a birthday to make it because it’s easy and tasty enough to make for no specific reason at all. This cake has kicked me back in gear with posting my Tuesdays with Dorie baking adventures after completely losing my blogging rhythm due to all the traveling I did during November and December selling SpiceCare.

I am excited to share this because it’s such a classic chocolate cake with no funny business; it’s the kind of cake Mrs. Cleaver would make. There is the wonderful little twist of malt powder in the frosting, but chocolate malts were popular in the 50’s, so it’s not so out of character really. The frosting is sweet making a cold glass of milk the perfect pairing to serve alongside a slice. I found the texture to be much improved after spending some time in the refrigerator rather than eating as soon as it was baked and frosted (we just couldn’t wait!). The cake became a little denser and slightly fudgy after being chilled. If you  usually buy cakes or bake from a box, I encourage you to give this recipe a whirl. There is something so special about a homemade cake; it will be worth the baking adventure.

I didn’t mess with this classic one bit. I even stuck with the two layers to be true to a classic birthday cake. I usually prefer to split layers and assemble four layer cakes, but that just seemed too fussy for this recipe. For my taste, in the future I will bump up the malt a touch because it’s really subtle and substitute at least half of the bittersweet chocolate in the frosting with unsweetened chocolate just to tame the sweetness a tad. Because it is such a sweet cake I highly recommend using a dark bittersweet chocolate, something in the 70% cocoa solids range. Trader Joe’s sells a nice bittersweet chocolate that is very reasonably priced, Cost Plus generally has a nice selection of imported dark chocolates as do many grocery stores. Standard chocolate chips would be far too sweet, but if that’s all you have, just substitute some unsweetened bakers chocolate to compensate.

Since I’ve encouraged non-bakers to give this cake a try, here are a few cake baking tips that might be helpful if you are new to baking.

• Invest in a roll of parchment paper to line the cake pans with. Just cut out circles of parchment that will fit right in the bottom of the pan. I don’t find it necessary to grease the parchment paper. Don’t forget to peel off the parchement before assembling the cake!
• Check your oven temperature and adjust accordingly if it runs hot or cold.
• Room temperature butter is considered to be about 66-68 degrees F. Easy to cut and spread, but not so warm it’s squishy.
• Room temperature ingredients incorporate better than cold.
• Take the chill off eggs before adding them to a batter by placing whole eggs in a bowl of hot tap water for 3-5 minutes before cracking them.
•  Take the chill off milk or other liquids with a quick blast in the microwave; just enough to remove the chill, not enough to make it hot.
• Avoid leveling a measuring cup of flour by shaking it. This compacts it and you’ll end up adding too much flour. The best method is to spoon flour into a measuring cup and then scrape it off level using a knife. Or even better weigh it; 1 cup of all purpose flour weighs 5 ounces.
• Take your time letting the butter and sugar cream. This process beats air into the ingredients which will enable the cake to rise in the oven.

For the recipe for Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake visit Laurie of Slush. She is the mastermind behind creating this baking group which has been cranking out weekly treats for two years now! She selected this week’s baking task and has the recipe posted on her blog.

Though I haven’t been blogging lately, I have been cooking and baking and will have a lot to share in the coming month as I catch up with my posts. Happy New Year!

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours . 107 recipes completed 114 to go!

All photos by David Peterman unless otherwise noted

Tags: Chocolate Malt Frosting

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 11:12 pm and is filed under Clever Tips and Tricks, Tuesdays with Dorie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.