high-bar baking

My biggest fan, i.e. the coworker who is the most enthusiastic about my baked goods, is leaving for a while because his third child is arriving imminently. Because I’ll miss his entirely-too-kind reviews, I wanted to make something special for him. Presented with the sprawling expanse of everything I’ve baked for the office in the last eighteen months, he chose this cake.

Yes, I keep track of what I bring into the office. Otherwise people will come up to you seven weeks later and say, “I just loved that chocolate thing you made that one time! It was my favourite!” And I have to stand there like an movie extra who was never given her script, because what can I possibly do with that information. 

This is not my absolute favourite-est of chocolate cakes, because that one’s never survived long enough to make it to the office, but is it up there. Dark, rich, and moist to the point of wet, as gross as that might sound. I love this cake; Ina Garten knows what she’s about. 

Universally, I do not use coffee in my baked goods. I hate coffee — why’s it have to taste bad? My mother, also a fervent hater of coffee, has told me my entire life that she can tell when coffee’s been used in a chocolate cake, no matter how much the baker swears you can’t taste it. I’ve never done a blind taste test, but I probably never will, because the other reason I omit it is I don’t have the equipment to make coffee or the inclination to go buy a hot cup immediately before baking. I always sub in boiling water (when hot coffee is expected; I’ve never seen cold coffee called for), and I’ve never had a problem. Today is no exception.

Other notes: Sarah uses 142g for a cup of flour, and I’ve used 80g for a cup of cocoa. She also uses fine salt, so I’ve used table salt here, not kosher like I do for almost everything else. She says to put the dry ingredients in the bowl of your stand mixer directly; I also say to do this. I ignored her, used a smaller bowl, and threw the flour-sugar-cocoa mixer all over my counter when I went to whisk it. If that’s on your bingo card for the evening, feel free to do as I did. 

When I flipped the layers out onto the wire racks to cool completely, I did do a double flip. That means I flipped a layer facedown onto a plate, then flipped it back over so it was right-side up on the wire rack. The tops are pretty moist, which made me nervous about getting them off the rack later. I had an incident with some red velvets last week in which the skin-coatings of the tops were sacrificed to the wire rack. Not a good chef’s treat, because they’re nearly impossible to get off! Of course, the cake’s so tender that it might not have made a difference, but I think it did.

I didn’t take great notes (cough, any notes) the last time I baked this, so I’d forgotten that it is a collapse-y recipe (again, Salt Lake coming into play). I had an inkling it might be, so I reduced the baking soda to 1.5 tsp off the bat, but it was not enough. It could have been worse, but the taller layer had some major sinkage in the middle. No worries, of course, this is why the Good Lord gave us serrated knives. Carve off the weird bits, pretend the sunken middle is the actual height, and no one will be any the wiser. Chef’s treat, too.

If you’re wondering, this was the moment I knew I was going to have some weird slices. That was not a level leveling. We’re still here. 

Keep in mind that you have to melt the chocolate for the frosting and then let it cool to room temperature before you can start in earnest. It’s burned me before. I used 150g of powdered sugar for her cup and a quarter, not from any official measurement, just from what my measuring cups (remember those? I hardly do) gave me. No, I did not sift it. Sometimes sifting matters, but it was not one of those days. 

I like when recipes warn you that this makes “just enough frosting to cover the cake.” This means that I don’t have to sacrifice a tupperware to the freezer gods until the indefinite future day in which I make a cake that can use the leftover quarter of the frosting. It gets used, I’m pretty good about it, but not before sitting in limbo for entirely too long. That also may not sound like enough frosting to decorate a cake, but I’ve come around in these last couple of years to the “naked cake.” Not only do I appreciate the aesthetic more than I used to, but more importantly, I think it is the correct amount of frosting for a cake. When I eat cake, I’m here for cake. I don’t have a blanket problem with frosting, but there’s no frosting in the world that is better than cake (I will hear arguments for whipped cream). So I never want an inch of frosting stacked between an inch of cake, just a thin, complimentary layer. A whisper. 

As I was walking to my car after work, I thought, with all the aspirations of youth, “I should actually try doing a crumb coat on this cake.” Then when I had the frosting in a bowl (with the direction to “use immediately!”) and a spatula in my hand, I said, “Well, that’s not happening.” There may be a day for crumb coats and beautifully professional cakes. But today is not that day. 

Today is a lopsided, not-crumb-coated, frosting-too-tall-on-top kind of day. And guess what: nobody cares. A good cake is hard to find. People are willing and eager to look overlook appearances. Absolutely eager.