Wednesday Night Chocolate Cake

Last week Susie, very correctly I might add, said that cake is a good way to say "hey, I like you." Cakes can be big or small, with lots of layers or just a few, and made with all manner of frosting, filling or ganache, but anyway you slice them, a cake will instantly let someone know that they are important.

Cake doesn't always need to be a big event or a big celebration though. Cake can also be a simple, quiet celebration, a good way to say "hey, I like me."

I am a firm believer in treating yourself, but I also believe that treating yourself doesn't have to involve a ton of dishes, hours of labor, and epic baking battles. I love a good challenge, but on a Wednesday night after a long day at work that was maybe a bit of a bummer, forty-five minutes is all I need to bring it back together.

Think of this cake as a meditation on dessert, an exercise in simplicity and subtlety. One bowl, one pan, and dessert can be an everyday affair, or maybe just a way to congratulate yourself on making it through the week.


Wednesday Night Chocolate Cake
Adapted from Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake

1 cup sugar
3/4 + 1/8 cups all-purpose flour, plus some for pan
3/8 cup cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil, plus some for pan
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup boiling water

1) Heat oven to 350°F. Grease one 9-inch round baking pan with oil, sprinkle in some flour and shake around to coat. Discard excess flour. (or make it really easy and spray with cooking spray with flour).

2) Stir together dry ingredients (sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt) in a large bowl. Add wet ingredients (eggs, milk, oil and vanilla); beat with a whisk or wooden spoon until smooth. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pan.

3) Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely.

Serve with fresh berries, a spoonful of jam, a dusting of powdered sugar, and/or a tall, ice cold glass of milk.

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L-L-L-Luscious Lemon Cake

Today I bring you a very special guest post from the lovely Miss Susie-Q. Susie is quite the accomplished baker and was kind enough to make the PHENOMENAL cake we all enjoyed at my birthday party. I can't thank her enough still (for the cake and for helping wash the dishes after I sliced open my hand). Today is officially my last birthday related recipe so let's all sit back and enjoy a little cake.



If you ask me, cake is nature’s most perfect food. Okay, so maybe it leaves something to be desired from a nutritional standpoint, but whatever needs it fails to satisfy in the body, it more than makes up for with its ability to feed the soul. I do know people who dislike cake, but I am suspicious of them, in much the same way I would be suspicious of someone who doesn’t like birthdays or rainbows. Cake is celebration food. The point is not nutrition, but indulgence.

I have been baking for a long time. As a kid, my best friend would come over and we would pour over my mother’s cookbooks and after much deliberation and more than a little bickering, we would pick a recipe and spend the rest of the afternoon making it, then stuffing our faces. It should come as no surprise that I had a rather chubby adolescence. But as we entered different high schools, and drifted apart, I fell away from baking.

Then one foggy summer day, everything changed. I was working as a swim instructor. Berkeley doesn’t get real summers. It is typically terrible until about two in the afternoon, so I had essentially spent several hours trying to convince small children that they wanted to swim as they turned an increasingly unnerving shade of blue. And then there was cake. It was a coworker’s birthday, and they had picked up a sticky chocolate confection from a nearby bakery, and after the cold, uncomfortable and generally unpleasant morning, that cake was the best thing that could have possibly happened to me. I was hooked on cake. Every Thursday, for the next year, was Cake Day. I would come home on Wednesday evening to bake, and drag the cake around with me the following day, offering it to any and all takers until it was gone. There were chocolate cakes, pound cakes, a snickerdoodle cake, and as time went by, the recipes got more complex.



I’ve always felt that baking a cake is a great way to tell someone “hey, I like you.” So I was thrilled when Maya asked me to bake her a birthday cake. She had some very specific instructions: lemon cake, with lemon curd, and she didn’t like typical frostings, so it would have to be French meringue or whipped cream. I found a very highly rated lemon cake on epicurious.com, which was gluten-free (not necessary here). I found a recipe for whipped cream frosting, which needed to be stabilized. And I can’t eat eggs in any significant amount, so the lemon curd would be tricky. But all of those problems solved themselves. I made a substitution of both cake and regular unbleached flour for the rice flour and xanthan gum, figured out a good way to get the cream to keep its fluff, and Maya located a solid recipe for egg-free lemon curd, which I fixed up a smidge with some real butter for authenticity.

And so, after years of baking, and years of experimenting, I created my first original recipe. You won’t find it anywhere else, and it’s pretty amazing, if I do say so myself. Which I do.


I heartily concur.


Susie’s Lemon Cake

Cake:
1 cup canola oil
1 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon finely grated fresh lemon zest
2 cups granulated sugar
4 large eggs

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 9 inch round pans. Line bottom of each pan with a round of parchment or wax paper, then grease paper.

Whisk together flours, salt, and baking powder until combined well. Stir together milk, canola oil (1 cup), vanilla, and zest in another bowl.

Beat together sugar and eggs in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed just until combined, about 1 minute. Reduce speed to low and add flour and milk mixtures alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour mixture and mixing until just combined.

Divide batter evenly between cake pans, smoothing tops, and bake until a wooden pick or skewer inserted in center of each cake layer comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes.

Cool cake layers in pans on racks 10 minutes. Run a thin knife around edge of 1 cake layer and remove from pan, placing on rack. Cool layers right side up. Repeat with second layer. Cool layers completely. Remove paper before frosting.


Lemon Curd:
1/4 cup cold water
1/2 cup sugar
3 Tbs Cornstarch
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tsp finely grated lemon zest
Pinch of salt
1-2 tbsp butter

In a saucepan, whisk together water, sugar, cornstarch, and salt until cornstarch is dissolved.

Bring mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. When mixture thickens.

Reduce heat to low and cook for another minute, stirring constantly.

Pour mixture into a non-metallic bowl and add lemon juice and zest, mixing well. Add butter, mix.

Allow to cool and thicken at room temperature.

Can be refrigerated, covered, for several days. Before serving, beat thoroughly to a smooth, spreadable consistency.


Frosting:
1 tsp unflavored gelatin
4 tsp cold water
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1/2 tsp lemon extract
zest of one lemon

Combine gelatin and cold water in small saucepan. Let stand until thick. Place over low heat, stirring constantly just until gelatin dissolves. Remove from heat and cool slightly. Whip cream, sugar, lemon extract and lemon zest until slightly thickened. While beating slowly, gradually add gelatin to whipped cream mixture. Whip at high speed until stiff.

Assembly
Cut cake layers in half, and spread lemon curd on bottom half, cut side up. Replace top half (cut side down).

Place one newly reassembled cake on cake plate, and spread generous amount (1 cup or so) of whipped cream frosting almost to edges.

Place second cake on top of the first, and mound remaining whipped cream on top.

Dig in.

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