Red Velvet Cake w/ Cooked Flour Icing

After cleaning the oven on Friday night, I was ready to bake again - I haven't been too thrilled with the taste of things coming out of the oven lately; to me everything tastes a little too smokey. Apparently I didn't do a good enough job cleaning after the flash-fire in February.

I baked a double-batch of the recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's book, Rose's Heavenly Cakes, yesterday in two 9" cake pans. They baked slightly longer than the recipe indicated; possibly because I had two in the oven instead of just one. They came out of the pans nicely with very little problem. I realized today that I forgot to take pictures yesterday, so I took photos just before frosting them today. Instead of a 2-layer cake, I am making two cakes with torted layers. That way, there is a small one for the family and one to take to Schwan's for taste testing. (Note: Terry was very kind and volunteered to take the Schwan cake in tonight when he works and share it with the Help Desk. He says that he will leave the rest for my "official" testers in Integrated Marketing. I told him that the three people there overnight cannot consume over half of the cake. We'll see tomorrow how that goes!!)

Rose's cookbook suggests a cream cheese icing for this cake, but I really like the recipe I got 20+ years ago that has a base of cooked flour and milk. I doubled the icing recipe, but I should have gone 2.5 times. There was not enough to adequately cover the sides of one of the cakes.

Terry and Bret were very impatient to get to their pieces tonight. I had to practically lock them out of the kitchen so that I could take photos. (impossible, I know, but you get the point...) They each gave the cake a thumbs up.

Also, as you can see, Gabby LOVED it too. We're still waiting for Natalia to finish the chicken from her chicken sandwich so that she can have a piece.

WTF? Is March the official 'Cakes for Jenn' month?

No post for 2 weeks - that's what happens when I get a stomach bug! That's not to say that I haven't been baking after I recovered. Terry is a tad bit jealous because apparently I've been baking too many cakes for Jenn. The Chocolate Lover's Angel Food cake I made last time was because Jenn's birthday was approaching and chocolate angel food is her favorite cake. Then there was the mock angel food with chocolate frosting for her son's 2nd birthday party. Finally, it was the chocolate angel food cake again with milk chocolate buttercream for her birthday.


Mock Angel Food with Chocolate Frosting - AKA Sullivan's Yo Gabba Gabba Birthday Cake
Sullivan's birthday party was delayed for a couple of weeks, but apparently enjoyed the mock angel food cake. Older brother Lincoln was a fan of the frosting (what 5-year-old isn't?). I will ask Jenn for pictures and post them later.

Chocolate Lover's Angel Food with Milk Chocolate Buttercream
This was for Jenn's birthday on March 18. I didn't serve it with Raspberry sauce; instead, I made an extremely simple milk chocolate buttercream. It was simply melted milk chocolate and bittersweet chocolate mixed with butter. It was literally melt-in-your-mouth delicious. Of course the recipe came from the Cake Bible.

One thing I need to figure out is how to let melted chocolate cool to room temperature but not have the edge around the bowl harden. The last times I've used melted chocolate in icing it has ended up with bits of hardened chocolate in it. Very frustrating....

Personally, I wasn't a huge fan of the cake, but Jenn said it was great. When we cut into the cake at work, I had a couple of bites and then just threw away the cake - saving the icing of course!!! I think that some of my issues with the cake have to do with the fact that I got the flu 24 hours after I made it the last time!!

Chocolate Lover's Angel Food

I was looking for a chocolate angel food cake recipe and lo and behold, there's one in the Cake Bible. I was able to use up all of the egg whites in my freezer, and didn't have to run to HyVee for any ingredients - that's nice on the purse-strings!

The cake was easy to make, even with 3-year-old Natalia's help :) It's funny; I used to avoid any recipe where I had to beat egg whites because I was afraid they wouldn't get enough volume. I guess cream of tartar and having them at room temperature (OK, today they were at 55 degrees, which is too cold even for me!) really helps.

The cake baked exactly according to the recipe - 40 minutes. I didn't have any bottle that fit the hole in my angel food cake pan, so it's propped up on soup cans right now. That appears to be working. I will take pictures after it comes out of the pan.

I also have raspberries thawing as well as some raspberry sauce. I'm not sure I can handle the whole berries (grits, you know!), but I love the sauce. I also have leftover raspberry ganache in the fridge that may taste good on the cake.

Mock Angel Food w/Chocolate Frosting

This weekend's cake was supposed to be mock angel food with chocolate frosting for Sullivan's 2nd birthday party. Unfortunately, the party was delayed a week, so the cake is in the freezer. Hopefully the cake will be enjoyed next Sunday!

Chocolate Taste Testing

Curiosities: Why does it seem women like chocolate so much more than men do?

http://www.news.wisc.edu/13719

The "girls" at work really seemed to like the All-American Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Neoclassic Buttercream icing. In fact a couple indicated that they liked it better than the other cake they had tasted. Both Natalia (3 yrs) and Gabby (14 months) ate it up with no problem. I was thrilled that there was icing left over that could be eaten 'as-is'

However, it didn't go over so well with men... my husband didn't even try the cake, my son didn't care for it, and Wendi's husband, Kelly, didn't care for it (although Kelly ends up with pieces of cake that were cut about 12 hours before he eats them and I'm not sure that's very fair).

So, what to do? Do I keep trying different chocolate recipes in the hopes of converting men, or do I just make the cake for females?

Perfect All-American Chocolate Butter Cake with Raspberry Ganache and Chocolate Neoclassic Buttercream

Wow; this cake used almost every pan/bowl in my kitchen! I started it last night by baking the cake and making the raspberry puree.

Cake
The cake wasn't too difficult; the worst part was having to wait for the cocoa/boiling water to cool so that I could make the cake. I learned my lesson from the yellow cake and baked two 8" and one 6" layers. They baked for 27 minutes. The cakes didn't seem to raise very high. Of course, that could be because I'm comparing it to the yellow-cake where I had overfilled the pans.

Raspberry Puree/Ganache
The first step for the raspberry ganache was to make raspberry puree from two bags of frozen raspberries. This was very time-consuming to make and strain to get all the grits out.


In all, I spent about 2.5 hours baking the cake and making the puree.

At lunch today, I made the raspberry ganache. Using Rose's food-processor method of making ganache was very easy. By the time I was ready for it, it had thickened too much, and I had to soften it a bit in the microwave.

Chocolate Neoclassic Buttercream
My first attempt at an egg-yolk icing. I melted the chocolate first and then put it in the fridge to cool down. What I didn't account for was how long I would need to beat the egg yolks and sugar syrup to reach room temperature. By the time I was ready for the melted chocolate, it had cooled a bit too much. This resulted in what I will consider chocolate-flecked icing. One thing to note is that the chocolate flecks don't work well when using a pastry bag - the chunks get stuck!

I will post tomorrow with the comments from my taste-testing crew!

Note that I am including two photos of the finished cake. I bought a pocket camera this weekend and I want to see how it compares with my 'real' camera. The first is from my Nikon and the second is from my new Kodak.