Chocolate Cake

When people walk into the cafe and see this sitting on the pastry case, they always ask, “What is THAT?”  ”Chocolate cake,” I answer simply, not quite sure what the big mystery is.  It LOOKS like a chocolate cake, smells like one, tastes like one.  So much so, infact, that I never thought to write a label for it.  But people still ask, and then roll their eyes at my answer.  

Anyhoo, the cake is simple; the frosting a labor of love–but worth it.  You’ll need a 6 qt. stand mixer for it.  If you don’t have one, make some other kind of frosting instead.

Ingredients for cake:

• 3 oz. unsweetened chocolate, melted
• 2 c. dark brown sugar
• 1/2 c. vegetable oil (I use safflower)
• 1/2 c. good quality olive oil
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 c. buttermilk
• 2-1/4 c. flour, sifted
• 2 t. baking soda
• 1/2 t. salt
• 1 c. boiling water
• 2 t. vanilla extract

Method:

Combine oils and sugar and beat until combined.  Add eggs and beat until light.  Stir in melted chocolate.  

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, soda and salt.  Add flour mixture and buttermilk alternately into the oil-egg mixture.  Flour, buttermilk, flour.

In measuring cup, mix boiling water and vanilla.  With beaters going, add hot water to the cake batter in a slow steady stream, and beat until fully incorporated.  

Pour into 2 greased, round 9×3 inch cake pans and bake at 375 degrees until the cake just begins to come away from the sides and is fully cooked in the middle–about 30 minutes.  Cool completely in the pans.

Ingredients for buttercream:

Note: this makes a crap-load of buttercream, but my philosophy is, when it comes to frosting, better too much than too little.  You could cut this recipe in half, but what’s the point? If you don’t use it all, freeze it and haul it out the next time you make this cake, cutting labor time by more than half.

• 8 egg whites
• 1 t. cream of tartar
• 1/2 c. water
• 1-1/4 c. sugar, plus 1/3 c.
• 1-1/2 lbs. unsalted butter, quite soft
• 12 oz bittersweet chocolate

Method:

Beat egg whites with a VERY clean whisk attachment in the VERY clean, grease free bowl of your stand mixer (sometimes I’ll douse a paper towel with a little rum or Kahlua and wipe down the inside of the bowl to make sure there is no residual oil on it from the last project).  

When whites become foamy, add cream of tartar and continue to beat until the whites hold peaks, but are not dry.  Like softly whipped cream.

Meanwhile, while the whites are beating, combine 1-1/4 c. sugar and water in a small sauce pan and bring to a boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.  Allow the syrup to cook for another  five minutes or so, without stirring.  Put the lid on the pan, so the steam can wash the sugar down the sides of the pan.  After five minutes of cooking, the syrup should be hot enough to cook your whites.  Pick up the lid: the bubbles should be bigger; forming and breaking slower.  

Add 1/3 c. granulated sugar to the beaten whites (while they are moving, so as not to  deflate them) in a slow steady stream.  When the simple syrup is ready, stop the mixer, pour approximately 1/2 cup of syrup and then immediately turn the mixer on high.  Stream in the rest of the syrup, being careful not to get any on the moving beaters.  You’ll thank me for saying so.  

Okay, beat this until it is completely cool–anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes.  Reduce the speed of the mixer somewhat, and start adding your butter in clumps of about 2 T each.  Wait until the first clump is fully incorporated before adding the next.  The whites will deflate the second you add the butter.  At this point, stop the mixer very briefly and scrape the sides of the bowl so that all the whites are mixed in.  

At any point that the mixture starts looking curdled, stop adding butter, suck it up and persevere.  You will think you have ruined it, but you haven’t.  I promise.  Just keep beating and it will all eventually smooth out.  Continue to add the butter until it is all gone.  Remember: this is buttercream.

When all the butter has been added and the buttercream is perfectly smooth–silky and light as a cloud–scrape in your melted, cooled chocolate and mix thoroughly.

Frost your cake any way you want.  Have fun and let me know how it went.

 

More notes: If it is a cool dry day, you may skip the whole hot simple syrup step, and cut the time to make the buttercream by more than half.  Keep in mind, however, that your egg whites will not be cooked, so I suggest you know your source.  According to Rose Levy-Barenbaum (author of The Cake Bible), egg whites are very stable–it’s the yolks we need to worry about.  Also, uncooked whites and uncooked sugar are more prone to weeping.  The recipe above is a very stable, and practically bulletproof in hot, humid weather.  Cheers!