When Charles orders cakes, he makes my life super easy by saying, "oh I don't know (as far as flavor), just make whatever you want." I am both being sarcastic and not in saying it makes my life easy. On the one hand, I get to decide and he has loved everything I've made for him, on the other hand, the pressure is all on me and sometimes it's easier if the person ordering the cake knows exactly what they want. So after some thought, I decided to use my recently favorite chocolate cake recipe (below). I've make this in a bundt, and in traditional cake pans and it is phenomenal. It is so rich, it could almost be a brownie recipe and I love it. I found it a while ago at my favorite baking blog, Lickthebowlgood. CHECK THIS BLOG OUT! It's great! I filled the cake with Vanilla Bean/ Coconut Buttercream and frosted in Vanilla Bean Buttercream. Whenever I use traditional buttercream, I I try to use as little sugar as possible while being able to hold the shape that buttercream needs to hold. I think most buttercreams are far too sweet, so I try to reduce the sweetness and increase good flavors in buttercreams. Keep in mind for my amounts that I made two 8 inch cakes, torted each and filled. So I had four torted layers of cake, and three layers of filling, You can make the same cake, but just stack the layers rather than torte them and save time, energy and frosting. I love the height of 4 layer cakes, so I usually torte my layers.
Chocolate Cake (Adapted from lickthebowlgood.blogspot.com)
Makes enough to fill a 10 inch bundt pan or 2 8x2in cake pans
- 1 cup cocoa powder, sifted, plus more for dusting pan
- 7 1/2 oz. semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
- 1 cup boiling water
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 1 1/4 tsp. kosher salt
- 20 Tbsp. (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
- 2 1/2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
- 5 eggs, lightly beaten
- 4 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups sour cream
- 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
Have all the ingredients at room temperature.
Preheat an oven to 325 degrees F. Grease Bundt or Cake pans and dust with cocoa powder; tap out the excess.
In a bowl, combine the 1 cup cocoa powder and the chocolate. Add the boiling water and whisk until the chocolate melts and the mixture is smooth and blended. Set aside.
Over a sheet of parchment, sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, beat the butter on medium speed until smooth and creamy, 30 to 45 seconds. Reduce the speed to low, add the brown sugar and beat until blended. Increase the speed to medium and continue beating until the mixture is light and fluffy, about 5 minutes, stopping the mixer occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs a little at a time, beating until incorporated before adding more and stopping the mixer occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Beat in the vanilla until incorporated, about 1 minute.
Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the sour cream and beginning and ending with the flour, beating just until blended and no lumps of flour remain. Slowly pour in the chocolate-cocoa mixture and beat until no white streaks are visible, stopping the mixer occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in the chocolate chips.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan, spreading the batter so the sides are about 1 inch higher than the center. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out with only a few moist crumbs attached to it, 60 to 65 minutes (40-45 for 8 in cake pans). Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let the cake cool upright in the pan for 15 minutes. Invert the pan onto the rack and lift off the pan. Let the cake cool completely, at least 1 hour.
1/2 C unsalted butter
1/2 C vegetable shortening
2 C confectioners sugar
1/2 of a fresh vanilla bean (check lessons learned for using vanilla bean paste instead)
1/4 C shredded coconut
1 t vanilla extract
dash of salt
splash of milk or cream, if needed
Mix shortening and butter until fluffy. Add confectioners sugar and mix on low until incoorperated. Add dash of salt and vanilla, mix until incoorperated. Cut vanilla bean in half, save the other half of the bean. Cut the vanilla bean open length wise and scrape out vanilla-goodness. Add to frosting mixture with coconut and mix until incoorperated. Scrape sides of mixer as needed. If the frosting is too thin, add confectioners sugar a little at a time. If too thick, add a little milk or cream to thin it out. Be very careful adding liquids. Especially if you decrease the confectioners sugar (traditional is 4 C rather than 2), this will thin out quickly.
After frosting the outside of the cake, I toasted extra shredded coconut on a cookie sheet at 400 degrees (next time I would toast it at 350) and used it to cover the sides of the cake.
Lessons learned:
- I discovered vanilla bean paste. It's wonderful. I used a mixture of vanilla bean paste and fresh vanilla beans, and I still prefer fresh because I think it holds the vanilla flavor better, but vanilla bean paste is a great option to save time. Usually the paste can be found at specialty baking stores. I don't have an exact idea of proportion, but I would say maybe about 2 t of paste per vanilla bean depending on the size of the bean.
- coconut toasts QUICKLY. Mine nearly burned. I will watch more carefully next time and toast it at 350 degrees rather than 400.
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