Cake

I made three chocolate cakes this week.

1. Chocolate pound cake with rosemary/ginger sauce, from lexculinaria.com. Made in cathedral bundt pan with only minor incident. Dusted outside with cocoa. Was delicious, and a big hit at the 4th of July party.

Criticism (personal) - a bit dense and fatty due to the high chocolate (Callebaut) and butter content. I think I like a lighter cake. Perhaps that is the definition of a pound cake, however, or at very least a chocolate one. The syrup was good, a bit thin, but tasty. The ginger dominated the rosemary, perhaps due to heating - maybe ginger holds up to heat better than rosemary.

2. Chocolate cake from online recipe. Valhrona cocoa.

3/4 c cocoa
1 c boiling water
1/2 c + 2 T butter
2 c sugar
3 eggs
1 t vanilla
1 3/4 c all purpose flour (unbleached)
1 1/2 t baking soda
3/4 c milk, 1/4 c sour cream (I used 1 c buttermilk)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Prepare 3 9" round pans (or 2 8" and 4 cupcakes was my yield). Mix cocoa and boiling water, set aside to cool. Beat butter and sugar in bowl until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating in between. Add vanilla. Add cocoa mixture gradually (if too hot, maybe cooks the eggs? mine got specky after this addition). Combine flour, soda and salt. Add alternately with milk mixture, beat. Fill pans, bake 30-35 minutes until pick test is clean. Cool for 10 minutes, then remove from pans, and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

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Stuck to the stupid silicone cake pans, b/c I didn't oil or flour them at all. Thus very crumbly. Tasty cake, though. Sturdy, like it could handle cream filling or fruit or something. Used buttermilk instead of milk and sour cream. Tastes a little fruity? like berry-flavor in wine?

Tried to make frosting with remaining callebaut chocolate and prob. would've been delicious, but the night making the cake I was stricken with food poisoning from an unknown source. Was it the turkey sausage from the pasta casserole? Or was it the yogurt and sour cream that were in the frosting? Or even the cake (#2) itself? (yes, yogurt, due to lack of enough sour cream). Lacking a strong sense of smell leads me to these disasters I think. I can't tell if it's bad dairy or not. And suspected it. Thus tossed the lot, sadly, b/c it was probably fine but did not want to be sick again.

The frosting recipe:

1 c chocolate pieces
1/4 c butter
1/2 c sour cream
1 t vanilla
2 1/2 c powdered sugar, sifted.
1/8 t salt

Melt chocolate with butter, cool 10 minutes. Stir in sour cream, vanilla, salt. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating by hand until desired consistency. Yield 4 cups.

3. Box chocolate cake with whipped tub frosting. The best surface appearance of all. Very fragrant, nice appearance, but lacked depth of flavor. The frosting was so gross in the tub, but pretty and smelly (good) on the cake, though again pretty simple in profile. It was whipped chocolate frosting, and the tub was like 7" tall, but the frosting slumped and looked so oily and nasty in the tub. Never again. I've been converted to just making frosting in the future.