All Cakes Considered - Melissa Gray [70]
3. In a separate bowl, dry whisk the flour, baking soda, cocoa, and baking powder together.
4. Add 1 cup of the floured cocoa mixture and ⅓ cup of the sour cream alternately, beating well after each addition. Repeat until all the flour mixture and sour cream have been blended in.
5. Add the food coloring and beat well. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl and stir up the batter at the bottom, then beat again.
6. Poor the batter into the prepared pans and place pans close to the center of the oven rack, but not touching. Bake for 45 minutes, or until the cake layers test done.
7. Cool the layers in the pans for 10 minutes, then unmold onto cake racks to cool to room temperature.
TO MAKE THE FROSTING
8. Cream the butter and cream cheese together at medium speed. Gradually add the confectioners’ sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and mix until just incorporated.
9. Assemble and frost the layers in the usual way, frosting the sides last, after the crown.
Triple Chocolate Orange Passion Cake
So, a special occasion came to pass in the office: one of my coworkers, an avid cake eater, was leaving NPR to work for Marketplace. I asked Jeremy Hobson what he’d like for his final Monday cake, and he said, “Fried Pies.” And I said, “EEEEEEEH! Wrong answer. Please play again.” “How about chocolate orange cake?” he countered. We bickered back and forth over the phone (which was funny because we could see each other’s faces since we sat in catty-corner cubicles) until he convinced me that chocolate and orange were a good flavor combination and worth four hours of my weekend.
I found this recipe in an interesting book called Cakes from Scratch in Half the Time by Linda West Eckhardt. Linda has reformulated classic cake recipes so that they mix in 20 percent less time and bake in 30 percent less time. The key is to bake them in thin aluminum pans at higher temperatures, the way professional bakers do. My wee oven is notoriously cranky, and at this point in my life I’m not about to get a whole new set of bakeware, but Linda’s recipes still taste great.
Because of the cranky oven, they took the usual amount of time to bake, but I did save on some mixing time. I used those extra 10 minutes to watch silly cat videos on You Tube. The boxing cats just kill me.
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YOU’LL NEED
Two 8-inch or 9-inch round cake pans
A medium bowl
A microwave-safe bowl
FOR THE CAKE
2 large eggs
Two 1-ounce squares unsweetened chocolate
2 cups cake flour
2 cups sugar
½ cup Dutch process unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon milk
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Grated zest and juice of 1 orange
FOR THE FROSTING
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
One 16-ounce box confectioners’ sugar (about 3¾ cups)
½ cup heavy whipping cream
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon orange oil or orange extract (see Tip)
Two 1-ounce squares unsweetened chocolate
FOR DECORATION (OPTIONAL)
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate for dipping citrus slices
About 6 clementine or orange slices
Tip: Orange oil can be tricky to find. Depending on where you live and what’s available, you might have to special order it, bringing us into the WALLET WARNING zone. Orange oil gives the cake an extra kick, but orange extract works fine.
TO MAKE THE CAKE
1. Center a rack and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Prepare the pans.
2. Put the eggs, still in their shells, in a bowl filled with hot tap water.
3. Bring about 2 cups of water to boil. While the water’s heating up …
4. In a microwave-safe bowl, melt the unsweetened chocolate squares in the microwave on high power.
5. In the mixer bowl, dry whisk the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, and salt together. Beat on low speed for 30 seconds, then, while beating continuously, add the milk, oil, eggs, vanilla extract, and orange zest, one at a time. Stop beating, scrape