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...

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...