Heaven in a Cake

 

Check back here for the recipes. It’s not pretty, but it’s pretty darn delicious.

And there’s something magical about chocolate and raspberries with a buttercream icing.

Once again, I implore you to make this cake. Unless you can’t have dairy or gluten, and then, well, I’m deeply sorry for your loss.

Oh. Em. Geeee.

Make this.

Make it and love it and share it with your friends. Or don’t share it. I haven’t even assembled the cake yet, but it is mind blowingly delicious.

Trust me.

Trust the pregnant lady who has been craving chocolate cake for a week.

Or make it and then trust yourself.

When I get to heaven, I think God will have a piece of this sitting on a pretty plate with a nice, cold glass of whole milk.

It’s just…

so good. I’m speechless, but I’ll stop rambling and just give you the recipe already!

Classic American Buttercream frosting from savorysweetlife.com.

This recipe uses powdered sugar, butter, vanilla and milk. This is a great recipe for decorating and piping on cupcakes and cake.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks or 1/2 pound), softened (but not melted!) Ideal texture should be like ice cream.
• 3-4 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar, SIFTED
• 1/4 teaspoon table salt
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• up to 4 tablespoons milk or heavy cream

Instructions

1. Beat butter for a few minutes with a mixer with the paddle attachment on medium speed. Add 3 cups of powdered sugar and turn your mixer on the lowest speed (so the sugar doesn’t blow everywhere) until the sugar has been incorporated with the butter. Increase mixer speed to medium and add vanilla extract, salt, and 2 tablespoons of milk/cream and beat for 3 minutes. If your frosting needs a more stiff consistency, add remaining sugar. If your frosting needs to be thinned out, add remaining milk 1 tablespoons at a time.

And this cake. I used decaf coffee because I can’t think of anything worse than lying awake in bed wishing you could sleep but for the extra caffeine you just had in that piece of cake. Having to think about chocolate cake that is keeping you awake instead of being asleep dreaming about chocolate cake just doesn’t seem fair. Torturous, maybe. But not fair.

Best Chocolate Cake Ever from iambaker.net

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup freshly brewed hot coffee

Directions

1. MAKE THE CAKE: Preheat the oven to 350°. Butter two 8-inch round
   cake pans and line them with parchment paper; butter the paper. Dust
   the pans with flour, tapping out any excess.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle, mix the
   flour with the sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt
   at low speed. In a medium bowl, whisk the buttermilk with the oil, eggs
   and vanilla. Slowly beat the buttermilk mixture into the dry
   ingredients until just incorporated, then slowly beat in the hot coffee
   until fully incorporated.
3. Pour the batter into the prepared pans. Bake for 35 minutes, or
   until a toothpick inserted in the center of each cake comes out clean.
   Let the cakes cool in the pans for 30 minutes, then invert the cakes
   onto a rack to cool completely. Peel off the parchment paper.
4. Set a cake layer on a plate with the flat side facing up. Evenly
   spread one-third of the frosting over the cake to the edge. Top with
   the second cake layer, rounded side up. Spread the remaining frosting
   over the top and side of the cake. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour
   before slicing.

Pictures to follow (if the cake lasts that long).

Thank you Dr. Steinman!

CAKE UPDATE:
The cake, IMHO, was delicious. It actually tasted like a really good sugar cookie with champagne flavored icing. Will definitely be making again!
—————————————–

Let the Waiting Game begin!

I like and dislike the end of a semester. I think the ‘likes’ are obvious: no more school for three weeks; I can sleep in until whenever; I have the time to read whatever I choose. Just a bunch of little freedoms that make me quite happy for about four days and then I’m bored because I don’t have anywhere to go and everyone I know is working.

The ‘dislikes’ should be pretty easy to guess too: no more classes to meet people; no new challenges; I become bored far too easily. But there’s one more: the Waiting Game for grades. I try to limit myself to checking only twice a day: Once in the morning and once at night.

So far it’s looking like a B semester. Which oddly enough, is what I expected. I didn’t put too much in this semester and I’m reaping what I sowed. With the exception of Nutrition. I say this in complete truth, I should have failed that class. I calculated my grade last week and knew that at the very most I could expect a D. It’s not that this class was overly difficult. I should have failed this class because it was 98% memorization, and I can not remember anything for beans. Or if, by some miracle, I manage to memorize something one day, the next day when I try to recall it, I’ve mixed it up completely and all of the associations I trained myself to remember are very disassociated. Top it off with total test anxiety and perhaps you will see my predicament. Can’t. Succeed.

But friends, somehow, somewhere my nutrition professor managed to find enough points to give me a C. And I just have to say that I’m fairly flabbergasted. I know what my grades were. There’s no way I earned a C. Maybe she checked the rest of my grades, saw that I was an English major with no future in medicine or nutrition and she felt like she could give me a C. I have no idea. But I am grateful that my GPA is not going to take the hit that I had originally expected. So, thank you, Dr. Steinman. I will think of you fondly as I sell my book back to the bookstore.

Also, I made a pink champagne cake yesterday from this magazine. I haven’t tried it yet since it’s for bible study tonight, but the batter was really quite tasty. It’s pretty labor intensive though. I only read the first few lines of instructions and the ingredients list. I probably would have chosen something else had I realized, but it was worth the experience.

Off to ride my (stationary) bicycle.