I was delighted to have the opportunity to make a birthday cake for my cousin's daughter Alexis, who just turned eight (and was last featured on this blog five years ago enjoying a speculaas cookie). My only direction was to make something chocolate, so I decided to go the super-chocolatey route with Elinor Klivans' New Brooklyn Blackout Cake: chocolate cake layers filled with chocolate pudding, covered in fudgy chocolate frosting, garnished with cake crumbs.
You have to make the filling in advance to give it sufficient time to set up. You combine cocoa powder, hot water, sugar, and chocolate in a pan, heating until the chocolate melts. Then you're supposed to add three tablespoons of cornstarch dissolved in two tablespoons of water and boil the mixture for a minute. The ratio of cornstarch to water was so high that it was difficult to get all of it to dissolve, and when I added it to the chocolate mixture on the stove, it clumped immediately. I tried to whisk as vigorously as I could to work out the lumps, but it was hopeless. So after I boiled the mixture briefly, I added butter and vanilla and then put the mixture through a sieve. I filtered out a lot of cornstarch clumps before putting the filling in the fridge to chill over night.
The cake recipe is straightforward. You cream room temperature butter and sugar; add eggs and vanilla; incorporate a cooled mixture of chocolate, cocoa powder, and milk that was heated until the chocolate melted; and add the sifted dry ingredients (cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt). You divide the batter between two buttered and parchment-lined 9-inch pans and bake. The fudge frosting is a mixture of melted butter and chocolate mixed with lukewarm water, corn syrup, and vanilla. It was thick, glossy, smooth, and easy to spread.
My cakes were not level, so I trimmed them after they were cool. Then I split each of the leveled cakes into two equal layers. I crumbled one of the cake layers, along with all of the cake trimmings, to make a huge pile of crumbs to use for decoration at the end. I stacked the layers and filled them with the chocolate pudding, which had set up nicely overnight. I frosted the cake and pressed cake crumbs onto the side -- I had way more cake crumbs than I needed. I would have had enough just from the cake trimmings without needing to sacrifice one of the cake layers (although I didn't have enough filling to make this a four-layer cake). I finished assembling this cake about 10 minutes before leaving for the birthday party, so I didn't refrigerate it.
The finished cake was so pretty and the crumbs added a lot of visual interest. The frosting had set up quite firm by the time we served the cake -- it was definitely closer to fudge or stiff ganache than buttercream. Because the filling, cake, and frosting were all the same color, it was difficult to make out the distinct components of the cake after it was sliced.
The cake itself was tender and moist with a deep chocolate flavor. I really liked the smooth pudding-like filling -- it was a nice change of pace from just having the same frosting inside, although I do wish there had been more of it. And I generally prefer light, silky frostings -- but for chocolate fans, this thick, fudge frosting was truly indulgent.
There is nothing subtle about this cake, but it really delivers for fans of chocolate. I knew it was a success after Alexis summed up her opinion of the cake in two words: "chocolate heaven."
Recipe: "New Brooklyn Blackout Cake" from Chocolate Cakes by Elinor Klivans, recipe available here at Leite's Culinaria.
Previous Post: "Jim Says Goodbye to His Mid-Thirties: Devil's Food White-Out Cake," November 18, 2011.
You have to make the filling in advance to give it sufficient time to set up. You combine cocoa powder, hot water, sugar, and chocolate in a pan, heating until the chocolate melts. Then you're supposed to add three tablespoons of cornstarch dissolved in two tablespoons of water and boil the mixture for a minute. The ratio of cornstarch to water was so high that it was difficult to get all of it to dissolve, and when I added it to the chocolate mixture on the stove, it clumped immediately. I tried to whisk as vigorously as I could to work out the lumps, but it was hopeless. So after I boiled the mixture briefly, I added butter and vanilla and then put the mixture through a sieve. I filtered out a lot of cornstarch clumps before putting the filling in the fridge to chill over night.
The cake recipe is straightforward. You cream room temperature butter and sugar; add eggs and vanilla; incorporate a cooled mixture of chocolate, cocoa powder, and milk that was heated until the chocolate melted; and add the sifted dry ingredients (cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt). You divide the batter between two buttered and parchment-lined 9-inch pans and bake. The fudge frosting is a mixture of melted butter and chocolate mixed with lukewarm water, corn syrup, and vanilla. It was thick, glossy, smooth, and easy to spread.
The cake itself was tender and moist with a deep chocolate flavor. I really liked the smooth pudding-like filling -- it was a nice change of pace from just having the same frosting inside, although I do wish there had been more of it. And I generally prefer light, silky frostings -- but for chocolate fans, this thick, fudge frosting was truly indulgent.
There is nothing subtle about this cake, but it really delivers for fans of chocolate. I knew it was a success after Alexis summed up her opinion of the cake in two words: "chocolate heaven."
Recipe: "New Brooklyn Blackout Cake" from Chocolate Cakes by Elinor Klivans, recipe available here at Leite's Culinaria.
Previous Post: "Jim Says Goodbye to His Mid-Thirties: Devil's Food White-Out Cake," November 18, 2011.
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