All Cakes Considered - Melissa Gray [68]
⅔ cup evaporated milk
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 small jar good-quality raspberry jam, warmed or stirred vigorously
TO MAKE THE CAKE
1. Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F. Prepare the cake pans.
2. In a bowl, whisk the cocoa and coffee until smooth. Set aside.
3. With the mixer on medium, combine the shortening and sugar, adding the sugar gradually. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract.
4. In another bowl, dry whisk the flour, baking soda, salt, and baking powder together.
I have tried a number of basic chocolate cake recipes, and none of them satisfy quite like this one. The cake is from Stephen Pyles’s Heaven and Hell Cake (page 209), which, incidentally, is the final and most challenging cake in this book.
(I know you just peeked. Yes, it’s two cakes, plus a mousse and a chocolate ganache. Do not panic. You’ll be more than prepared.)
Now, I rather dig devil’s food cake with white frosting, and the Seven-Minute Icing on page 162 works fine, but eventually you’ll have to satisfy your own Chocolate Cake Caucus. This combination will shut them up for a while. The crumb is richly chocolaty and moist, and a layer of raspberry jam gives the cake a fresh kick. The icing will smooth itself out and form a firm outer shell once it cools. Make sure to double it if you’re baking more than 2 layers.
5. Add half of the flour mixture to the creamed mixture, beat, then add the cocoa and coffee mixture and beat again. Add the remaining flour mixture and beat until smooth.
6. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pans and place on the oven rack as close to the middle as possible without touching. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the layers test done.
7. Cool the layers in the pans for 10 minutes, then unmold onto cake racks.
TO MAKE THE FROSTING
8. Melt the chocolate morsels with the evaporated milk in the top of a double boiler over simmering water, stirring constantly until fairly smooth. Remove from the heat.
9. Gradually add the sugar and beat with a wooden spoon or a handheld mixer until smooth. Set aside.
TO CONSTRUCT THE CAKE
10. Once the cake has cooled to room temperature, divide the layers if you wish (see page 159). Place the worst layer on the bottom, and save the best one for the top. If you do divide the layers, make sure the exposed crumb side faces down.
11. Place the bottom layer on the cake plate. Spread a layer of frosting on the top. Next spread a thin layer of raspberry jam on top of the frosting. Add the next cake layer and repeat until you reach the crown.
12. Frost the top of the crown. Scrape away any excess jam from the sides and then frost the sides of the cake.
Like, baking with chocolate: Part II
The Revenge of the Dutch Process Cocoa (DPC)
Sung to the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies
Come and listen to a story ‘bout a Red Velvet Cake
Made with Dutch process cocoa
Man, it tasted really great!
Only one problem
The cake it would not rise
Could not put it in this book, no
That would not be wise
Bad reviews you see—loss of face—no credibility.
Well, the first thing I did was get a different brand
Of unsweetened cocoa
But that was really bland
So I added in some baking powder
And then some DPC
Then loaded up the mixer
It was fluffy as could be
Lots of air bubbles, that is
A springy, tasty cake
Ya’ll come back now, ya hear?
OK. Bernie Taupin (Elton John’s lyricist) has nothing to fear. The lesson here is this: If you use Dutch process unsweetened cocoa in a cake recipe that doesn’t include baking powder, you’re going to get a flat, moist, dense—yet awfully tasty—cake. This goes back to our chemistry lesson on the reaction that makes cakes rise: the interaction between your leavening agent, moisture, and heat.
Regular unsweetened cocoa is acidic. The addition of baking soda, which is alkaline, reacts to that acidic property, enlarging all those air bubbles whipped into the batter during creaming, which when baked, result in a risen cake. Dutch process