When I asked our paralegal Sheya what sort of cake she wanted for her birthday, she replied without hesitation, "chocolate." I asked if she wanted chocolate paired with another flavor or something more specific, but she gave the same one-word answer: "chocolate." I got the hint and decided to make her a chocolate birthday cake with chocolate frosting.
I used the recipe for "Chocolate Heaven with Chocolate Buttercream" from The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook. Cheryl Day says that this chocolate cake is the first thing she learned to bake with her grandmother and that it remains the best cake she has ever tasted.
The recipe is straightforward. You combine all of the dry ingredients in a mixer (cake flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt); and add the remaining ingredients (eggs, oil, sour cream, vanilla, and unsweetened chocolate that has been melted in hot freshly brewed coffee) in three additions. The batter was very thin and I divided it between three parchment-lined 9-inch pans.
The frosting recipe is a simple American buttercream. You beat softened butter with milk, melted chocolate, vanilla, and powdered sugar. The recipe calls for semisweet chocolate and I used a 2:1 mixture of 70% dark chocolate and 35% milk chocolate. The recipe yielded a lot of frosting and it had a lovely body and was very easy to suave. It actually reminded me of the Pillsbury frosting ad from my childhood where the premise was that the chocolate frosting was so smooth and creamy that you could spread it with a paper knife. This frosting spread like a dream.
This is a simple but truly satisfying classic chocolate cake. The cake was soft and had the very moist texture I would expect from an oil cake. It had a nice deep chocolate flavor and I liked the touch of coffee. The frosting was fluffy and smooth, and not as buttery as the flour, Italian, or French buttercreams that I tend to make. I often won't eat all of the frosting on a slice of cake because it's too rich, but here I couldn't resist scraping my plate for every last bit of buttercream.
There's really nothing fancy about this cake, but I would recommend it without reservation to any chocolate fan.
Recipe: "Chocolate Heaven with Chocolate Buttercream" from The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook by Cheryl Day and Griffith Day, recipe available here at The Splendid Table.
I used the recipe for "Chocolate Heaven with Chocolate Buttercream" from The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook. Cheryl Day says that this chocolate cake is the first thing she learned to bake with her grandmother and that it remains the best cake she has ever tasted.
The recipe is straightforward. You combine all of the dry ingredients in a mixer (cake flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt); and add the remaining ingredients (eggs, oil, sour cream, vanilla, and unsweetened chocolate that has been melted in hot freshly brewed coffee) in three additions. The batter was very thin and I divided it between three parchment-lined 9-inch pans.
There's really nothing fancy about this cake, but I would recommend it without reservation to any chocolate fan.
Recipe: "Chocolate Heaven with Chocolate Buttercream" from The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook by Cheryl Day and Griffith Day, recipe available here at The Splendid Table.
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