The Absolute Best Chocolate Cake

It is my brother in law and mother in law's birthday on Friday. What better reason to drive home to Kansas and hand deliver a delicious cake?!

Honestly, I've never had much luck with white/yellow cake recipes. For some reason, they always turn out like corn bread. At least they just taste like it to me. It would either be a chocolate cake or a red velvet cake. Since I didn't want to whip out my red food dye I decided to make a chocolate cake.

My usual chocolate cake recipe is...good. It works. It hasn't really failed me in regards to flavor. It's spilled over a few times and sometimes it's not as light as I'd like it to be. All the same, the flavor is mild chocolate and not overpowering. Usually when you buy a cake from the grocery it will be so chocolatey that your tastebuds will be choco-burned the next morning and you couldn't bring yourself to eat a teaspoon of sugar even if your life depended upon it. I pride myself on my mild chocolate cake! YUM!

Since I left my recipe books at the restaurant I decided to find another chocolate cake recipe. I have bookmarked over 60 recipes for sweets and desserts here on my computer. I figured I could find a good chocolate cake recipe in there somewhere!

Like a flash of lightning from the heavens above---"Moist Devil's Food Cake" lit up in my gaze. I was dumbfounded as I looked at the picture of a sample cake using this recipe. Three layers of rich and moist chocolate cake between shiny chocolate ganache! Oh boy howdy--the angels sang.

The joyous melody of the heavenly beings came to a screeching halt. "Where are my mixers?" I asked myself out loud. Instantly, I remembered. I left those at work as well. What's a woman to do but go old...old...fashioned and mix everything by hand?

I jotted down the recipe and assembled my ingredients along with a heavy duty bamboo spoon, a whisk, and a spatula.

Moist Devil's Food Cake

(Adapted from Martha Stewart Living, 2006)

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, softened (plus a bit more for the pans)

2 1/4 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 tbsp vanilla

1/2 cup boiling water

3/4 cup cocoa (plus a bit more for the pans)

1 cup whole milk

3 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

*note* I mixed all of this by hand. The cake came out like a dream. I'd recommend giving your mixers a break for once!

Whisk your butter until it is creamy and smooth.

Add the sugar and stir/whisk until fully incorporated.

Dump the sugar into the mix and enjoy the aroma.

Break the 4 eggs into the sugar/butter mixture and stir until it is all incorporated.

Butter, Whisked

Butter and sugar, mixed

With the boiling water in a large bowl, slowly add the cocoa and milk alternately and stir (not whisk--the chocolate will get caught in the whisking hooks) constantly. It will become very thick and hard to stir if you wait to add the milk until you've mixed the chocolate and water. When it looks like it is starting to thicken up nicely you can whisk. Set aside.

I used Hershey's Dark Chocolate Cocoa. AMAZING taste.

The aftermath of the cocoa/milk fiasco--lesson learned. Add the cocoa and milk to the boiling water together to avoid clumpage.

Sift the flour, soda, and salt into a bowl.

See all the clumps? Sifting the flour mix will eliminate those clumps and make a smooth batter.

Pour the flour and cocoa mixtures into the butter mix, alternating between the flour mixture and the cocoa milk mixture. Stir with your long spoon in figure eight or circular motions towards your body and away from.

The first addition of flour and cocoa/milk

More flour, please!

The last addition of cocoa/milk--look how dark the cocoa is!

The final batter. The spoon almost stood straight up in it! Thick stuff!

Grease your pans with butter and sprinkle cocoa inside the pans. Shake pans to coat with cocoa well. The batter will not be runny, but thick. Use a spatula to spoon batter into pans and smooth even.

(I used four 7 inch aluminum pans and had no batter left over. You could use three 8 inch pans or even two 9 inch pans I'm sure. I'm not a fan of using those long rectangular pans--but if you want to, go for it!)

Bake at 350 until a toothpick comes out of the center clean. My 7 inch pans took about 25-35 minutes.

Enjoy!

GREAT chocolate cake. I'd make it again!

Fondue for you!

It's been a crazy week. My absence must be excused!

As I stated in my last post, I entered a song competition! Vote daily for my song! http://www.myairforcelife.com/contests/songs_frame.cfm?view=78&category=1 If I win, I plan on buying a baby grand piano with the prize: $2000 gift card to musiciansfriend.com.

I was not having a good day on Sunday. I woke up and started to make tea on the stove for Sam's daily dose of sweet tea. It started out normal-- a clean 3 gallon glass jar, a full saucepan of boiling water with steeping teabags, and sugar ready for deployment.

I let the teabags steep for about 10 minutes. I then grabbed the saucepan and slowly poured the tea into the glass jar. After pouring all the tea inside, I walked away with the saucepan and started to rinse out the pan. About 10 seconds later, I heard a few grinding sounds and cracking noises---I turned just in time to see the whole 3 gallon jar, half full of tea, shifting off it's base and cracking--tea flowing over the counter and all over the floor.

Thankfully, the jar stayed on the base but just shifted--the glass didn't break or fall onto the floor.

Happy Jenna.

I was so upset. Little did I know that later that night I would be receiving a glass shard in my foot.

ON TO BIGGER and more positive things!

A few months ago, my wonderful husband took me out on a date to The Melting Pot-- a fancy fondue restaurant. Ever since then, I knew I was in love with fondue. The whole idea of dipping so many fruits, veggies, and meats into a cheesy sauce or an oil boil makes my heart flutter.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Fondue, it's a whole meal experience. One has a cheese fondue with dippers such as bread pieces, apples, veggies, or chips. The cheese is melted in a fondue pot over a tealight or a stronger flame (or can be electric). The guests use long forklike sticks to dip said delights into the cheese. Another fondue is an oil fondue where a person has raw meat that they dip into the oil until the meat boils done (each piece of meat takes about 2 minutes). My favorite type of fondue is the dessert fondue--- melted chocolate! Basically, melt chocolate and whipping cream, add some peanut butter, flavors, or crushed up nuts/graham crackers. Dippers include strawberries, cheesecake, bananas, marshmallows, cake, or pineapples! You can really just go crazy choosing your dippers!

I bought a fondue set at a garage sale a few weeks ago for $7.00 (yay bargains!). Only problem with it was that it didn't have a ceramic insert or a nonstick inner bowl---it was all metal. Metal and chocolate/cheese fondue do not mix. I was craving fondue but needed that insert. I bit the bullet and bought an electric fondue bowl.

The recipe of choice was a simple Swiss fondue. After assembling the ingredients for the fondue and for the dippers, I started to prep.

Fondue takes a lot of prep work. A person must cut up everything they plan to use as dippers into bite size pieces. This means using about 6 mini baguettes for four people, boiling the broccoli and chopping into smaller pieces, cutting and cleaning the veggies too. For the dessert fondue, it doesn't feel like work! You can snag a couple of bites of strawberries or cheesecake...and call it even.

Original Swiss Fondue

(from The Fondue Bible, Ilana Simon)

8oz Emmentaler cheese, grated

8oz Gruyere cheese, graterd

1 1/2 tbsp flour

1 garlic clove, halved

1 1/4 C dry white wine (I used Mad Housewife Chardonnay)

(Refrigerate grated cheeses until you are ready to use them)

In a bowl, combine the grated cheeses and flour. Mix very well. Set aside.

Rub the inside of a saucepan/fondue bowl with the garlic clove. Discard garlic.

Add wine to bowl and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Reduce heat to medium-low.

Add cheese mixture to bowl by handfuls, stirring constantly after each addition in a figure eight motion until all cheese is incorporated and melted. Put pot on a warmer just enough to keep the cheese warm and melted, but not bubbly or boiling.

Enjoy!

I found that a whisk was nice to use when adding cheese, but it seemed to get the cheese tangled up inside the whisk hooks, so I used a bamboo long spoon instead and it worked great. Because I'm a fan of spices, I used garlic and some ground yellow mustard in the cheese as well. I stirred both in while the cheese was melting.

This Swiss fondue has a tangy flavor to it. It is strong but not overpowering. I found that my favorite dippers for this cheese fondue are apples (Yes!), bread, and broccoli. You could also use boiled potatoes, blanched red peppers, mushrooms, or even zucchini rounds.

Chocolate Fondue

3/4C Whipping cream

12 oz chocolate, chopped

2 tbsp kirsch, kahlua, or other liqueur (optional)

Heat cream until warm (do not boil or burn). Add chocolate and stir constantly until melted and smooth.

Dippers:

Apple Wedges, pineapple chinks, cherries, strawberries, bananas, pound cake cubes, marshmallows, rice crispy treat cubes, almonds, orange slices.

You could use dark chocolate or milk chocolate. Milk Chocolate is very sweet! I used milk chocolate morsels. It took a while for them to melt but I felt safer using those than a baking bar. If you double this recipe, you will have enough chocolate for 2 fondue gatherings or if you really enjoy chocolate, one!

Adaptations:

Rocky Road: Add 1-2tbsp graham crumbs and 1 1/2 c mini marshmallows.

Peanut Butter Chocolate: Add 1/2 c peanut butter and chopped peanuts to the chocolate.

White Chocolate: sub white chocolate for brown chocolate and add 1 1/2tsp coconut rum.

YUM!