high-bar baking

If I’m mistaken, don’t correct me. 

Hm, a frightening motto. My dad likes to use, “I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.” 

Point being, in my head, the word gauntlet has two wildly different applications. You can say, “Throw down the gauntlet” to indicate a challenge, or you can use gauntlet to indicate a long and arduous journey, like “ran the gauntlet.” How do you think the word for “medieval knight glove” (in my head, what a gauntlet is) came to stand in for both of those concepts? 

Ok, I couldn’t help myself — had to look. Apparently running the gauntlet referred to medieval punishment in which you had to run back and forth between two fixed points and some guys wearing armour gloves would beat you as you passed. Learn something new every day. 

I’m talking about gauntlets not for that reason, but because a challenge has been issued. Issued on my behalf, I suppose. An old co-worker texted me the other day that he’d been talking up my chocolate cake (as he is wont to do, in his role as my biggest fan) and one of his teammates said she had a good chocolate frosting. Would I be interested in a head-to-head? 

My conditions: I get the recipe, and I get to clarify to my fan that the cake he loves isn’t even my favourite. The terms were accepted. Pistols at dawn. 

I mean, cakes at noon (it was high noon, ok! Very Wild West duel culture) in the office building on Main Street. 

I’ll be competing with this bad boy, that I double-checked this weekend. I used to use Sarah’s THE Chocolate Cake recipe, which is a reprint of Ina Garten’s. I went back to remake it on Friday only to discover that Sarah’s made modifications in the interim. I tried her newest tweaks and was very pleased with them. Which is good, because I didn’t like not having the tried-and-true recipe, even if I could go to Ina’s site and get it. It might not be the SAME! And Ina doesn’t list weights, which is a big shaking of the head. (Although, my old blog post did, so that’s cool). 

I guessed how much to cut the chemical leaveners and was delighted to succeed. The baking soda went down to 1tsp and the baking powder to 1/2 — I cut them both in half, and the cakes domed beautifully. I couldn’t have dreamed them more perfectly. 

The frosting I’ll use (and that I used here; it’s in my freezer now waiting for its encore) is Claire’s Cream Cheese Frosting, chocolate iteration. I used semisweet chocolate instead of unsweetened. I’d already gone back to the store for more cream cheese (it takes two blocks, not one! When will I learn to read?), and I wasn’t making an additional trip. It’s a frosting good enough to actually eat. Cream cheese does wonders to regular American buttercream. I’m interested in my competitor’s recipe — if it manages to beat me out, I’ll have to add it to my arsenal!