Belated Birthday Baking Bounty

In our home we celebrated a birthday (or two!) a little late this year, but with great fanfare.  Having recently made an AMAZING chocolate cake, I knew where to begin - with the Deep, Dark Chocolate Cake in BakeWise.  This cake is truly great.  Having now used it twice, with folks who really know and love chocolate, it is a decided hit, and will be my go-to chocolate cake now.

I decided to top the cake with The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook's Vanilla Buttercream frosting.  While the proportions are estimates, certainly, their instruction to whip the frosting for much longer than you think you need to is well taken.  The frosting is utterly light, yet so rich!

I also tried something new, a suggestion from BakeWise (this Shirley O. Corriher knows what she's doing around a cake!).  A variation on the chocolate cake recipe calls for a "Cake Soaking Solution."  While I didn't follow the recipe exactly, I did use it to create a light syrup, which is poured over the cake layer when the syrup is hot, melting a bit of the chocolate and adding extra moisture to the cake before it is frosted.

 When I had frosted the first layer and placed the second layer, this looked like a giant whoopie pie, which made me giggle and consider (if only for a moment) simply leaving it in this state.

However, I decided to continue with the rest of the assembly.  I added another drizzle of the hot soaking solution to the top layer of the cake.  It lends the cake something of a glazed effect, and makes the cake remain moist and luscious much longer!  Then I added in the remaining frosting, swirling the top into a slight, snowy peak.

As a final touch, I added some dark chocolate shavings to the top of the cake - a mature finish for a decidedly indulgent cake.

When it came time to serve the cake, I cut small pieces, as this is RICH.  However, everyone devoured it, and my 10-year-old niece enjoyed a second piece, in honor of her belated birthday too.



Even three days after the cake was baked, and two and half days after assembly, it had not dried out at all.  The remaining piece was gobbled up, and just as enjoyable, on day four!  Mmm...

Preserving Summer

This summer I enjoyed some of the best peaches EVER.  However, toward the end of the summer, I started to get a little sad about the fact that they would soon be no more.  I pondered how to save them in such a manner that I could enjoy them later in the year - especially when it's cold and dark and there is no fresh, local fruit available!

Some peaches simply got peeled, cut into chunks and frozen.  These will be yummy either in smoothies or just thawed and eaten as-is.  However, I still had a lot of peaches.  Having never experimented with making jams, I figured I might as well!

The experiment began with some exploration of recipes and methods.  I found the University of Georgia's National Center for Home Food Preservation to be very helpful; it had instructions on how to do the actual canning, complete with times for sterilizing jars, processing the jars and how long it should take to cook the jams, even.  For recipes, I trolled the internet and looked through a few cookbooks, too.

Ready to begin, I started by peeling and cutting up my fruit.  I dumped it, along with the sugar and lemon juice, into a dutch oven over medium heat, and stirred as it slowly degraded the fruit.  I used about two parts fruit to one part sugar, with the juice from half of a large lemon (it was a juicy lemon).  This cooked down and cooked down, filling the house with the smell of fresh peaches.

In the meantime, I had the jars boiling to sterilize them.  When the jam seemed ready, based on my using a spoon and seeing how gelatinous the mixture was, I pulled the jars out of the boiling water.  I then used a funnel to dump the jam into the jars, capped them, and quickly put them back in the boiling water to process.

After processing, I removed them and let them sit on the kitchen counter.  A bit later, I was rewarded with a reassuring POP as they sealed.  They are now in the cabinet, awaiting slightly cooler days that call for warm corn muffins, maple butter and fresh peach jam...I can't wait!

The Adventures of the Most Awesome Birthday Cake Ever, Part 3: The Big Reveal

The final part in a multi-part series on bang-up birthday cakes gone ballistic!


I know what you're thinking...this cake is insane.  But you know that can't be it...there's MORE!

The cake you saw in the last post lived overnight in the refrigerator (which was taped shut by the lady of the house to prevent the birthday boy from peeking at his surprise of a culinary creation).  The next morning, a quick heat to a saucepan of cream poured over some dark chocolate, set, and then stirred, yielded a gorgeous chocolate ganache to top the cake.  Poured over the chilled cake, it quickly settled into thick, luscious ribbons of chocolate across the top of the cake.

This concoction was almost perfect, but it still lacked pizazz.  Still having those chocolate chip cookie chunks (remember these?), they were crumbled more and sprinkled across the top of the cake.

At last, the cake was prepared!  It looked gorgeous as is, but as it is THE MOST AWESOME BIRTHDAY CAKE EVER, we HAD to have candles!

The birthday boy was overwhelmed with joy at the glorious cake that was his, on the occasion of his birthday.  For more on the celebration, and a cross-section of the cake, see this blog.

Everyone enjoyed the cake, though it was VERY rich.  About two thirds of it gotten eaten during the party, more at a Dither rehearsal the next day, and still more in an office the following day.  This left one final piece for the birthday boy to enjoy ON his birthday!  I think it's safe to say that this cake took the cake!


Thus concludes the adventures of the Most Awesome Birthday Cake Ever!

The Adventures of the Most Awesome Birthday Cake Ever, Part 2: The Saga Continues

The second in a multi-part series...

It was a calm, clear day in New York when the two lonely chocolate cake layers arrived.  They were seeking adventure in the big city, and were hoping to find some companions, too!  However, soon, disaster struck.  Hungry for a doughnut, the cake layers wandered across Manhattan to the home of the chocolate blackout doughnut, only to find it CLOSED!!!

Not to be deterred, the cake layers quickly sought out other chocolate doughnuts.  Walking back across Manhattan, the cake layers found friends at Balthazar.  While not part of the original plan, disaster was averted.

Returning to the kitchen, it was time to bake again.  The effort began with a wonderful chocolate chip cookie recipe, baked in grand form.

After the cookie was baked, the mixer was kicked into high gear making chocolate buttercream frosting. This is not just any frosting, but the very chocolate buttercream frosting used at Magnolia Bakery and outlined in The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook.  Of course, for a cake this grand, we needed a double batch of buttercream - which entailed a pound of butter, 12 ounces of chocolate, and a pound and a half of sugar...

Finally, it was time for assembly.  It began with a careful surgery of the giant cookie base.  Using a cake layer as a reference, the base was cut to size.  The remainders were chopped into small pieces for a later use - who throws away perfectly good chocolate chip cookie?

Once in place, the cookie was ready for its topping - a layer of that luscious chocolate buttercream frosting.

The cookie layer was frosted, topped with a layer of chocolate cake, then more frosting, and then...the surprise ingredient, a layer of chocolate doughnuts.  The doughnuts were not added whole, but were split to cover more surface area with the doughnut cake.  Buttercream frosting was then used liberally on top of the doughnuts to "cement" them into place.

At this point, your teeth may be hurting, but we're not done yet.  On top of this concoction went the final layer of chocolate cake, and then the entire thing was coated in chocolate buttercream.  Mmm...

Beautiful, right?  Rich, indulgent and downright sinful.  But that's not all!

Stay tuned for the startling conclusion to this adventure in baking...

The Adventures of the Most Awesome Birthday Cake Ever, Part 1

The first in a multi-part series...

It all began with a little harmless conversation about how much my brother likes chocolate...in cake, in doughnuts, in cookies...and this spun wildly out of control, into a diabolical plot.  And thus the weekend before Labor Day I found myself, and my kitchen, covered in chocolate and filled with the scent of cake...

The first step in making our dreams reality was the cake itself.  I have a new book, BakeWise by Shirley O. Corriher (and published by Simon & Schuster), that is a phenomenal resource not only for recipes, but also for the ins and outs, the hows and whys of baking.  Inside this tome, I found the recipe for this dream cake.

Thus began my adventure...which started with boiling water mixed with sugar and cocoa, then blended with oil and eggs, then the dry ingredients.  This is NOT a cake for the faint-hearted.

This batter was enriched with buttermilk, and boy was it dark, yet light.  I got it into the oven, and watched it turn into a lovely set of 9-inch cake rounds, and one little sample cake in a ramekin.

I sampled the little cake, just to ensure the cake was a success.  It was light and moist, with a tender crumb and rich, chocolatey flavor.  This is GOOD cake!

After the layers cooled, I wrapped them carefully (and perhaps a bit obsessively) and froze them.  Freezing not only makes it easier to put a cake together in just a little time, as the baking is already done, but it also makes it easier to transport the cake for final assembly for birthday celebrations in far-off cities.

Mmm, cake...

Stay tuned for more of The Adventures of the Most Awesome Birthday Cake Ever...