Alright, friends. Let's get real. Baking takes time and effort to learn how to do well, and while
I do not at all claim to be an expert, over the past few years I have fine-tuned my personal method. I have found that sometimes the most helpful tips in baking (perhaps in life as well) are the ones that no one shares with you and you must learn on your own. I am going to attempt to remedy this by explaining, in excruciating detail, how I make cakes.
This post is Part I, and is just the cake recipe. Since cakes and frostings are often interchangeable, I thought it would be helpful to write separate posts for each. I will also do a tutorial on how to assemble and frost a cake.
This cake is fairly easy to make and flippin' delicious. It's probably my favorite cake and will be enjoyed by just about anybody. It's a moist chocolate cake that goes well with many different frostings. I can recall using chocolate, chocolate peanut butter, peanut butter brown sugar, caramel, cookies and cream, Baileys cream, and raspberry. It's also delicious without frosting or just with some whipped cream. The recipe for the cake came from Rose Levy Barenbaum's
The Cake Bible. It is the most excellent baking book you could own, in my opinion. I highly recommend it. I make almost all of my cakes from this book, and there are recipes that are extremely simple, quite complicated, and everything in-between.
Perfect All-American Chocolate Butter Cake
Makes 2 9" round cake layers, about 10-15 servings.
Ingredients
Note: You'll notice nearly all of my dry ingredients are listed by weight, in ounces. So yes, you'll need a digital kitchen scale.
Dutch-processed unsweetened cocoa powder (I use Hershey's Special Dark) - 3.5 ounces
Boiling water - 1 1/3 cups (11 oz)
4 large eggs, room temperature
Vanilla extract - 1 tablespoon
Cake Flour (I use
Swan's Down) - 11 ounces
Granulated Sugar - 14 ounces
Baking Powder - 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon
Table Salt - 1 teaspoon
Unsalted Sweet Cream Butter, softened (we'll discuss tips on how to do this quickly) - 1 1/3 cups
Crisco or other vegetable shortening
Extra flour for cake pan dusting (I use all-purpose for this so I don't waste my more expensive cake flour)
Equipment
Note: This is just what I use. You can use other pieces for certain tasks, or you can just leave some pieces out all together. However, I have found that having all of these things makes it easier.
Kitchenaid Stand Mixer
Beater blade for mixer, preferably one with
silicone edges for scraping. Seriously, it is worth the money. I don't think I've used my regular beater blade since I bought this one. It nearly eliminates all of that obnoxious "scraping down" of the mixing bowl. I'm actually contemplating getting an additional one.
Small bowl, about cereal bowl sized
Whisk
Tea kettle or small saucepan
2-cup glass measuring cup
Digital kitchen scale
Paper plate
Tablespoon measuring spoon
Teaspoon measuring spoon
Silicone spatula/bowl scraper
2 - 9" cake pans. I highly recommend
Fat Daddio's brand. They're pretty cheap, durable, and excellent all around. (Haha... all a-ROUND...)
Toothpicks
2 cooling racks (I have
these)
Method
Get everything you will need out. And I mean EVERYTHING. Put it all on the counter.
First let's talk about how you weigh dry ingredients. Put the paper plate on the digital scale, like this:
How you tare out the plate will depend on how your scale works. It's imperative that you do this so the scale will not count the weight of the plate towards the weight of your ingredients. For my scale, I can put the plate on there before I turn it on, or I can press the "Tare" button. Then you can just pour or scoop out the ingredients onto the plate until you have the amount you need, and then put them in your mixing bowl. Why do we weigh ingredients instead of just measuring them in cups? Dry ingredients, especially flour, tend to not measure accurately if you measure them in cups because there can be a lot of variation as to how densely you pack the flour into your measuring cup. If you pack it down, you will end up with more flour than if you lightly scoop it into the cup. Therefore, you could end up with a huge range of the actual amount of flour you get and it could mess up your cake. Plus, this way, you don't have to sift, and sifting flour is one of the most obnoxious tasks in baking, if you ask me.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Put the top rack in the middle of the oven. You'll be putting both pans on this rack.
Put some water (I don't measure it, as long as I can tell it's a little more than 1 1/3 cups) in the tea kettle or saucepan and bring it to a boil. Pour 1 1/3 cups of it into the glass measuring cup. Weigh out your 3.5 ounces of cocoa powder and, using the whisk, mix it into the hot water. Put it in the freezer (I just leave the whisk in there) to speed the cooling process.
Weigh the flour and dump it into the mixer's bowl. Then repeat with the sugar. Measure the baking powder and salt with the measuring spoons and add them to the mixer's bowl as well. Attach the beater blade and mix on the "Stir" setting for about 30 seconds. This is why we do not have to sift our ingredients. This will both aerate the dry ingredients and blend them together. Hooray, no sifting!
The other bowl is for the eggs and vanilla, primarily. Tip about cracking eggs: crack them on a flat surface, like a countertop, rather than on the edge of a bowl or on the corner of the counter. This makes it less likely for you to have pesky eggshell bits remaining in your eggs. So put the eggs and the vanilla in the bowl.
Now, since you're mostly just waiting on your cocoa mixture to cool, is a good time to take care of some other things, like preparing your cake pans. Do not use cooking spray; it will not work as well. Your cake, or worse, parts of it, will probably stick to the pan and either break on its own or you may break it trying to get it out. This method works much much better. Using your hand, scoop out a bit of the Crisco, or other vegetable shortening, and coat the bottoms and sides of both pans with it. You don't need a thick layer, just enough to lightly grease the entire thing. When your done, wash your hands with dish soap to get that nasty off of you.
Then scoop or pour a little bit of the all-purpose flour into each pan, and shake it around a bit to coat the entire bottom of the pan. Then tilt the pan up toward you and turn it around (like you're turning a steering wheel) to move the flour along the sides of the pan to coat it. Dump the extra flour into the other pan, add a little more flour if needed, and repeat. Then take each pan, turn it upside down over your sink or garbage can, and hit the back of it with your hand a few times to get any extra flour off.
Prepared cake pans, FTW!
This is really and truly the best way to prepare cake pans. You don't need parchment paper circles, and you don't need butter or cooking spray. The reason you use shortening instead of butter is shortening, unlike butter, does not have water in it that will turn the flour into a paste and ultimately risk gluing your cake layers to the pan.
You can also soften your butter during this time. The "correct" way to do this is to leave the butter out on the counter for hours so it can soften on its own, but seriously, who is actually going to do that? I use the microwave. Put the butter, still in the wrapper, in the microwave for 30 seconds on 30% power. Check to see if it is soft (if it makes a significant indention when you poke it), and if not, flip each stick over and do it again. How many times you have to do this really depends on your microwave, but basically what you want is butter that is soft, but will not drip.
At this point, check the temperature of your cocoa mixture by sticking your (clean) finger in it. If it feels warm to you, stir it a bit and put it back in the freezer until it doesn't. If it's too hot when you mix it in, it will prematurely cook your eggs. Nobody wants scrambled egg in their cake. Once it is cool enough to use, pour a little bit (about 1/4 of it) into the bowl with the vanilla and eggs and, using the whisk, mix it a little, just enough to break the yolks and get the mixture somewhat combined. Pour the rest of the cocoa mixture into the mixer's bowl and add the butter. It helps to break the sticks at least in half.
If you have a splatter guard for your mixer, it might be wise to put it on at this point. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Honestly it depends on if I care if I get flour on whatever I am wearing. Today I was baking in my pajamas, so I didn't bother. Turn your mixer on "Stir" for about 10 seconds or until you are fairly confident turning it higher will not cause you to be covered in your ingredients. Then turn it to medium (about 6 on the Kitchenaid) and let it mix for about 1 1/2 minutes. If you do not have the silicone-edged beater blade (shame on you), turn off your mixer 2 times during mixing to scrape down the sides with your rubber/silicone spatula. (See, don't you wish you had listened to me about the scraper blade?) Be sure to mix it for the full 1 1/2 minutes. This aerates your cake batter and develops the cake's structure.
Pour in about 1/3 of the egg mixture, mix on "Stir" for about 5-10 seconds, then on medium (about 6) for another 10-15 seconds. Add another 1/3 of the mixture, mix again, and add the last third, being sure to scrape in the last bits of the egg mixture with your spatula, and mix once more in this same fashion.
Your cake batter is now finished! Pour it into your prepared pans, trying your best to put an equal amount in each. Use your spatula to scrape out the last bits of cake batter. After you have filled your cake pans, pick them up about 6-8 inches of the counter and drop them onto the counter a few times. This is loud and obnoxious, but it will help any large bubbles in your batter rise to the top and leave your cake.
Place the pans in your oven, on the same rack. Try not to let them touch each other or the sides of your oven. Set your timer for 25 minutes. About halfway through baking, turn the pans around and swap them back to front, if they had to be off-centered. This will ensure that your cake layers bake evenly, which is especially important if, like me, you have sort of a crappy oven that is hotter in the back than in the front, or vice versa.
I apologize for my gross-looking oven.
After 25 minutes, stick a toothpick in each of the layers near the middle. If the toothpick comes out clean or nearly clean (like with a small crumb or two on it), your cakes are done. If not, bake about 3-4 more minutes and then check again, until your cakes are done. Place the pans on the cooling racks for about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes has passed, you'll turn the layers out onto the cooling racks. To do this, put the pan on the counter or table, flip the cooling rack over on top of it. Then, holding the cooling rack to the edges of the pan, flip the entire thing over. Your cake layer should release from the pan and rest upside-down on the cooling rack.
Let these layers cool completely before you try to use them, and I mean completely. Like for a few hours. If you don't listen to me about anything else, listen to me on this. If you try and rush through this and start frosting them early, you will regret it, especially if you are using butter-based frosting. Even just the slightest bit of warmth from the cake can melt the frosting at an alarming rate, ruining your frosting and quite possibly your cake. I have done this an embarrassing number of times and I have finally put my foot down with myself. You must wait.
Once your cake layers are cooled, you're finished! You can now eat your cake or assemble and frost it with just about any frosting or whipped cream.
This same method, or one similar to it, can be used for most cakes. With almost every cake I have ever made, I mix the dry ingredients first, then add the wet, etc. You will also use almost all of this equipment for most cakes, so keep it handy.
Part II coming...well...eventually! I don't have enough opportunities to make cake anymore, but the next time I do you can expect another installment of this tutorial!
