All Cakes Considered - Melissa Gray [67]
5. Pour the batter into the cake pans and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the cake layers test done.
6. Cool the layers in the pans for 10 minutes, then unmold onto cake racks and cool to room temperature.
7. Do not divide the layers, but do even up the top of the lower layer so that the layer stacks prettily.
TO MAKE THE FROSTING
8. Cream the butter in the mixer at medium speed. Beat in the confectioners’ sugar, evaporated milk, vanilla extract, and orange extract. Mix until smooth. Add the orange peel and mix until incorporated.
9. Frost the cake and refrigerate for 20 minutes to firm up the frosting.
My neighbor Julie Sibbing brought me a 35-cent pamphlet with cake recipes after cleaning out her mother’s cookbooks. It’s a gift that just keeps on giving. The pamphlet is just forty-eight pages, with recipes so simplified that they might as well be haikus. It’s called 200 Classic Cake Recipes, and it was put together by the Culinary Arts Institute in 1969, the year I was born. “No complicated beating and mixing are necessary for this elegant Sour Cream Spice Cake”, it proclaims. And it’s true. There was only one problem: the ATC staff was split on the frosting. Some (my true Spice-and-Vicers) felt the crumb was so moist and good that it didn’t need frosting, or should have only had a very thin layer. Others were completely gaga over the frosting and urged me to add MORE. With those two different reactions in mind, I think this cake works best with full, rather than divided, layers and a thin layer of frosting in between. For that reason, the frosting is enough for a 2-layer cake.
More Cake Lore
It has been my experience that a Monday cake will be down to the last slice within an hour and a half of arriving at NPR. And then there’s the long wait while that very last slice gets whittled down to half, and the half to a quarter, and then the quarter stands there, drying out. This drives me nuts. I never can catch the whittlers in the act, and though I’ve polled my co-workers, none will admit to it. As to why it happens, they suggest, “Well, maybe none of us wants to be the little piggy who eats the very last slice of cake.”
Oh, so I assume there’s nothing wrong with being the little piggy who eats the very first slice, or goes back for seconds or thirds? I need a human behaviorist here.
In the meantime, I need to get the cake plate and the carry cleaned before 1:00 P.M., when we start gearing up for our live 4:00 P.M. show. So I call my favorite cleanup hitter, Rob Ballenger, in Newscast. But even Rob is hesitant to finish off the last slice of layer cake that’s sans frosting. This sounds barbaric, but it happens even at a place as civilized, smart, and classy as NPR: When the whittling begins, inevitably someone just lops off the frosting part.
I’m not going to name names, but this happened with comic brutality once. A veteran newsman was making his way out of the studio when he passed by the remaining hunk of a frosted spice cake, the equivalent of about three slices. Ignoring the cake knife, he used his BARE HANDS to tear off the top layer and toddled happily away. Our then-editor Quinn O’Toole saw the whole thing and couldn’t stop laughing. “Quinn!” I said, aghast at a new low in office table manners. “Why didn’t you stop him?”
“I was scared!” Quinn replied. “What if he took a swipe at me with his frosting-covered hands? Who’d edit the show?”
Now, whenever there’s a frosted cake up front, one of the resident smarty-pants will joke about getting a slice early, before our cake scalper passes by.
Devil’s Food Cake with Quick Fudge Icing and Raspberry Jam If You’re Going to Sin, Sin Big
* * *
YOU’LL NEED
Three 8-inch or two 9-inch round cake pans
2 medium bowls
A double-boiler, real or improvised
FOR THE CAKE
½ cup unsweetened cocoa
1 cup strong coffee, cooled
½ cup shortening
1½ cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1½ cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
FOR THE FROSTING AND FILLING
One 12-ounce package semisweet chocolate