Cake

I love cake. I love the way cake looks and I love the way it tastes---when it is good, and made with real ingredients and done right. I am not a cake expert but I am trying. I've given up bread baking for the time being, due to horrible tendonitis in my arms, but I can make cake because I have a wonderful Kitchen Aid mixer that my husband gave me for, oddly, bread making.

So cake. I would love to be better at cake baking. I had a couple of pushes recently. One: my addiction to the show Master Chef which we watched over the summer. One episode had the competitors all making six-layer iced cakes in under two hours. It was inspirational (I've found the show has really lit a fire under my cooking. Ha.). Then, last August, a friend baked a chocolate cake with a ganache for the frosting. I have not yet tried a ganache, but plan to someday (hers was delicious).

And so, here, for Maya W. celebrating her tenth birthday, I baked a cake, all chocolate, since she is a chocolate fanatic. A simple chocolate buttercream for frosting. It was delicious.

The recipe for both the cake and the frosting came from The New Good Housekeeping Cookbook.

Chocolate cake
3/4 cup cocoa
2 Cups cake flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups milk
3/4 cup shortening (read: butter)
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
*about 1/4 cup good quality baking chocolate, melted. Add to batter when it has cooled. This isn't in the recipe, but it worked well.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees; butter and flour (with cocoa powder) two 9" cake pans.
Measure dry ingredients and mix, then add wet and best with miser at low speed until combined. Increase mixer speed to high and beat for 2 minutes, until batter is smooth and
glossy.
Pour into pans and bake for 30-35 minutes. Cool cakes in pans for 10 minutes on rack, then remove from pans and cool completely on racks before frosting. This can be made as cupcakes as well; baking time is then reduced to about 25 minutes.