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Crossposts: http://telophase.livejournal.com/2545296.html

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CAKE PORN

So that post I made last week asking for suggestions for semi-spectacular desserts? This is what I ended up with:

And this is what it looks like when cut open:

It's Serious Eats' Chocolate Decadence Cake, which is a triple-layer bittersweet chocolate cake with chocolate filling, buttercream frosting, and topped with chocolate ganache.

It's denser than it ought to be because it calls for cake flour, and I made it, and as I was icing it, I idly looked to my left, and as my gaze fell on the unopened cake flour box I thought "Huh. I wonder why we bought that?" and then it struck me and I thought "Oh, fuck." Everyone who ate it told me it was great anyway and that they didn't think it needed to be fluffier and I silently thought YOU ARE ALL HEATHENS IT SHOULD BE FLUFFIER and ARGH DO THEY THINK I'M FISHING FOR COMPLIMENTS but merely said "Thank you." It was good that it was flat, in a way, because that meant it fit into a 10x10x4" box, and that fit EXACTLY into the soft-side freezable picnic cooler we got, so it stayed refrigerated all the way down to Mom's, and then all the way to Toby's parents, and then the leftovers made it to my aunt and uncle's house, and the last couple of slices made it back to Mom's.

It was almost a $500 cake, as the recipe I was using for the buttercream frosting had you pour a hot sugar syrup into an egg/butter mixture as you were beating it, and said to beat for 5-10 minutes, until the bowl was no longer warm. 30 minutes of beating later I resorted to wrapping ice cubes in a dish towel and surrounding the base of the bowl on the stand mixer to get it cool. I was terrified that our 25-year-old inherited stand mixer's motor would burn out, but it powered on through, despite getting quite hot to the touch, and seems to have survived. I have to admit that I am vaguely disappointed at not having an excuse to start saving for one of the latest KitchenAid mixers and various accessories (the bowl goes up and down! there's a lid with a spout so you can pour powdered sugar into the bowl while it's mixing and not have a cloud arise and cover the room!).

But the buttercream icing was DELICIOUS, tasting like vanilla ice cream base, so there's that.

Next time: cake flour, a different buttercream that won't kill my mixer (sigh), and perhaps a different recipe with only two layers because as I get older I am finding I much prefer the cake part to the icing part, an opinion that my twelve-year-old self would find HERETICAL.

P.S. I also made whoopie pies. :D

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That looks spectacular. :D Cake!

That cake is MONUMENTAL.

Wow, that looks SO GOOD. *_*

As for the flour, hmm, based on what you're saying, I'd probably deliberately use regular flour then, because I prefer dense cake to fluffy cake (I really dislike how fluffy box mix cakes are, for example).

Box mixes are really too fluffy--you can't layer them up nicely. For this sort of thing, you want a cake in between, that's fluffy enough that it's not hockey pucklike, but dense enough to stand up to stacking without falling apart once you slice it.

Thanks!

Thank you!

Thank you! :D

That cake is gorgeous and sounds amazing. *^^*

It could have been flatter! My mom forgot the baking soda in her post-Thanksgiving chocolate cake .... (it also tasted fine in a very flat sort of way but I'm betting yours tasted better.)

Congratulations on achieving spectacular cake!

The rest is details, and nobody needs to know.

Thanks! :)

Hee! Yeah, it could have been. :) Thanks!

Thanks! :)

Hah, I love dense, flourless chocolate cake and am not a fan of regular cake. So I probably would have preferred the cake without the cake flour, even if it was supposed to be fluffy. I'm okay with being a heathen though. :)

I have no idea how complicated ganache is, but it makes the cake look extra elaborate.

Ganache is siiiiimple! I believe this one was 8 ounces of bittersweet chocolate chips, 1 cup cream, and 1 tablespoon butter. You heat the cream up to a simmer, then pour it over the chips and wait 5 minutes or so for it to heat them up. Pop the butter in and start stirring, and keep stirring as the chips melt and become incorporated. The most difficult part is judging at which temperature it's warm enough to spread but cool enough to create those nifty-looking drips, and that's not actually difficult. :)

My tongue is hanging out!

i keep pawing at the screen but no chocolate appears :(

BRB, going back in time to steal cake. It looks like it was absolutely delicious.

Sorry! Next time I'll figure out how to make it TCP/IP compatible!

Thanks! :)

:D Thanks!

Before I forget I also want to say how much I like the drippy ganache thing going on. It looks better than some professionally done cakes I've bought in the past. It seems a lot more complicated than you make it sound in the comments above. :)

That's what attracted me to the cake--reading it, I found out how easy it was! The cake's just more tedious than anything else, since you have to bake it, and make 3 different batches of frosting/filling. (I ended up making a double batch of buttercream and adding cocoa powder to half of it to make the filling, just to cut down on some work, although given how long it took to cool down, I don't think I actually saved any work.)

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