Solo Mission: Chocolate Cake and Butter Cream Frosting Aug. 24, 2010

Tuesday night was a homework night. As soon as I got home, I settled in to reading from my Marketing textbook, taking a brief break to eat and put laundry in the machine.

As I finished my second hour with the book, I had the vision of myself in the kitchen, baking. So when I reached a natural stopping point in the reading, I headed there and pulled out The Joy of Vegan Baking.

I flipped through breads, first, but none caught my interest. Cakes/cupcakes was next, and the first recipe there was for chocolate cake. I skipped the ingredients, determined I had all of them on hand, then found the buttercream frosting recipe - ingredients I also had. Bingo.

Now, I wasn’t particular about what i was baking - another cake, or another kind of treat would have been fine - it just had to be something I didn’t have to go to the store for. The draw for me wasn’t the end product, it was the actual baking process.

The recipe promised to be one of the easiest cake recipe. Literally. “This chocolate cake might be the easiest cake in the world to prepare,” (pg 72).

It reminded me of the Mile High Chocolate Cake recipe we had tried earlier- though I used a mixing bowl instead of mixing directly in the cake pan.

I mixed in the dry ingredients with a fork, an when I was measuring the liquid ingredients into a well pressed into the dry mix, I added the vinegar last, and mixed the ingredients. The vinegar reacted with the baking soda, lightening the mix. Not having a 9" cake pan the recipe called for, I poured the batter into an 8” round dark metal cake pan. Like adding the vinegar in last, another trick I’ve picked up along the way is to force the bubbles out of the batter by dropping the cake pan on the counter a few times from about 1/2 an inch up. That done, I put the cake in the middle of the middle rack of my oven, and set the timer for 25 minutes.

While the cake baked, I measured out 1/2 cup non-dairy butter into a metal mixing bowl and put it on the back of the stove - near where some of the heat from the oven vents - to soften the butter.

The most time-consuming part of this confection was sifting 2 cups of confectioner’s sugar for the frosting. I was also a hesitant to pull out a hand mixer, but realized there was no way I’d get fluffy frosting by mixing by hand.

I love how the frosting swirls

I checked the cake at 25 minutes, I don’t know if it was because it was a dark metal, or an 8 inch pan, but toothpicks came out clean even though it was five minutes shy of the time in the cookbook. I am also glad I added the cake pan wrapper on as the edges first still a little low compared to center.

I left the cake cool, covered the icing, and put it in the fridge. I pulled it out again after about 10-15 minutes.

Cake cooling

One of the easiest frosting jobs ever

When I went to ice the cake I was pleasantly surprised with how the frosting spread. It seemed  a little less thick than commercial frostings I’d bought in the past (harder to get a cohesive blob on my spatula) but it spread nicely. Also, it did not pick up chocolate flecks from the cake and mix it in with the white icing, as happened with my last cake (made from commercial mix with store-bought frosting.) Now I am sure this was due to a a combination of things -- not one magic secret -- I was icing the top of the cake for instance, not the bottom; I used oil in the pan (not shortening); the frosting was slightly chilled, not room temperature; and the consistency of the frosting was different.



As for taste, the cake was moist and decadent. The frosting, my sister said, smelled astringent but tasted wonderful. She suggested perhaps rosewater as an addition to the frosting (something I’ll have to experiment with) or or food coloring. And I need practice getting a smooth spread of frosting on the cake, but there are classes for that. 

Moist cake and yummy frosting

I took the cake in to work the next day, and it was a welcome treat. My co-workers said that the frosting tasted just like they expected buttercream frosting to taste like, so I score what started out as a diversion from homework a success.

New tools/ ingredients:  none
Recipes used: Chocolate Cake from The Joy of Vegan Baking pg 72 ; Buttercream Frosting from The Joy of Vegan Baking pg 231
Co-baker: solo-mission
Date: Aug. 24, 2010