Chocolate Fudge Cake

Little Man's father's birthday was the other day, and since I was tethered to the house to monitor the remodeling operation, I decided to try my hand at a chocolate fudge cake. After spending way too long looking on the internet and poking through my recipes and cook books, I decided on these two recipes, taken from allrecipes.com. The result was AWESOME, if I do say so myself.

Black Chocolate Cake submitted by Jeanie Bean
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsps baking soda
2 tsps baking powder
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder ( I used especially dark dutch style)
1 pinch salt
2/3 cup shortening
2 cups boiling water ( I used 1 cup water and 1 cup coffee)
2 eggs beaten
2 tsps vanilla

1. Sift together dry ingredients
2. Melt shortening in boiling water, then stir it into the dry ingredients. Beat in eggs, then stir in vanilla.
3. Pour into a greased and floured pan.

The recipe calls for a 9 x 13 pan with 30 minutes cooking time at 350 degrees.
In the review section, someone said two 9" round pans took 25 minutes at 350 degrees. Another reviewer said two 8" round pans took around 36 minutes at 350 degrees.

I used a Wilton 8" round, 3" deep pan and cooked it at 325 degrees for 57 minutes.


Caroline's Chocolate fudge Frosting submitted by Carrie Reynolds.

1/2 cup butter
3 (1 oz) squares unsweetened chocolate
1 pound confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup milk

Melt chocolate and butter in the microwave or double boiler. Combine confect sugar, vanilla and 1/2 cup of the milk. Add the melted chocolate mixture. Add remaining milk as needed.

Allow to stand until spreadable. (Frosting will thicken as it cools.)

My variation: (sorta kinda half again as much)

I used 3/4 cups butter, 5 squares of chocolate, 1 1/2 lbs of confect sugar, 2 tsps vanilla, and about 3/4 cups of a combination of milk and half & half. The consistency was wonderful and it was enough to do the 3 layers I cut the cake into, with some to spare for decorating.

Sometimes I even amaze myself!

Tonight was the final class of Wilton Course 2, and here is a picture of the result. I'm thrilled with it! Featured are royal icing flowers, basket weave pattern on the side, rope boarder on the top and bottom edge, and buttercream leaves to accent. I have to give credit to my Wilton teacher and to the Wilton method, which can make even this novice look good.

Happy Easter!!!!!

Hallelujah - Jesus Lives! Today is a day to celebrate and praise God!

Gotta Start Somewhere

I suppose we could call these "Early" efforts in my cake decorating career. The good news is that they tasted better than they looked. I made the chocolate cake last weekend so I could practice the various techniques learned in Course I. The cake with orange roses was decorated on the final night of Course I and featured shell borders, sweet peas (orange around bottom edge), dots, leaves, ribbons, writing (stems) and of course, roses. The reason the orange roses look like a bouquet and the chocolate roses look like they'd been plunked is because I learned at the last class to make a frosting mound to park the roses on to give them dimension. Who knew? Anyhow, on to Course II, which started Tuesday night. We are learning how to make flowers out of royal icing. (aka edible concrete!) Our first one was a yellow mum. Mine looked vaguely like a dandelion that didn't get out of the mower's way. We'll see if some practice tomorrow improve things.

Adventures in Cake Decorating Part 2

Well, here are the results! The rainbow cake was actually decorated in class according to the book design. I used store-bought Wilton colors. (Ran out of patience!) I just slapped some decorations on the Little Man cake tonight so I could go ahead and eat it! Both cakes were made with Betty Crocker Super Moist cake mixes. One had seedless raspberry jam between the layers and the other had pudding. At class we also learned the first 2 steps in making a rose. It was great fun and I can't wait to see what we learn next week!

Adventures in Cake Decorating

Little Man's father & I are taking Wilton Cake Decorating Course 1 at our local AC Moore store. Last week was the first session, which was all demonstration by the teacher - how to make icing (3 different consistencies), how to use the decorator bags and tips, and how to level, torte, and frost a cake. Tomorrow is session 2, where we will get hands on practice. We are supposed to show up with a leveled, frosted cake and an assortment of frostings of different consistencies to practice borders, writing, stars, and the famous Wilton rose. I spent quite a few hours this afternoon baking 2 cakes and making a total of 4 batches of buttercream icing. For some reason my stomach hurts! Could it be all that bowl licking? By the fourth batch even I was just tossing the beaters into soapy water without licking them first! Anyhow, here are the before pictures.