Saturday, December 22, 2012

Recipe #7: Double Chocolate Layer Cake

Posted by Unknown


When I first thought about starting a food blog the one thing I was most nervous about was making cakes. It is definitely not my strong suit. I can eventually get the recipe right however I am not a skilled cake decorator so this is a something I hope improves over the next year.

It's the day after we put our dog down and we are going to my brother's house tomorrow for an early xmas celebration and I decided to make him a cake (unfortunately for him his birthday is Christmas day). I want to keep myself distracted and this looks like just the recipe to challenge me and keep my mind off losing my sweet dog.

I got my mise en place together and started in. I got all the way to step #7 and realized I skipped ahead and did step #8 before completing step #6 and #7. I had added in a 1/2 cup of oil and then added the buttermilk, then the chocolate, and then the rest of the oil. Based on my limited experience with cakes I already knew the cake would not turn out but I had come so far so I treated it as an experiment. I completed all the steps, baked it, and pulled it out of the oven. Within 20 minutes the cake fell in the middle. Ugh! Time to start over.

I prepped all the ingredients again and this time I realized the I had left out a couple tablespoons here and there of ingredients on the first round so basically the first cake didn't have a chance. My brain was distracted by sadness, my son, and family that was visiting at the time. Note to self: Cakes need 100% of focused attention.

The result: The cake turned out ok... actually the presentation turned out quite poorly. I could have cooked it about 5 minutes longer and I really didn't let it cool long enough either. Time was not on my side and I wanted to get it frosted as I knew I would not have time to decorate the cake the morning of. Because I took the cake out of the pan too soon the cake was not stable enough for me to split it. It was quickly falling apart and so I decided to just cover it with a bunch of frosting and call it good. The flavor was good but it was not a success overall.

No picture included on this post for obvious reasons. I will try this recipe again but not for awhile. It was time consuming and having made it twice I don't want to attempt it again for several months.

For full recipe: See page 258 in the Dahlia Bakery cookbook

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