Level up your cooking

So my first suggestion from my friend Adam after finally getting back to writing on my Blog was a moist Chocolate Cake recipe.  I didn’t have time to bake multiple cakes, so I went off Googling.  I read many recipes that called for baby food, and other ingredients you wouldn’t expect.  I stopped searching when I found one that called for a cup of hot coffee.  Being a bit of a coffee lover it beckoned to me.   The Cake recipe didn’t include a frosting recipe, so this is where I found a nice Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting.

For the cake I followed the recipe to the letter.  I used a Fair Trade Rwandan coffee in a French Press, for the cup of hot coffee.   My oven baked slower on the right side than the left, so the cake round on the right stayed in about 4 minutes longer than the cake round on the right.  This is one of those things you just need to know about you oven.

For the frosting I modified the recipe a little partly because I was lazy.  My butter was frozen and my cream cheese wasn’t softened, so it was tighter that it should have been and wasn’t as smooth as it should be (I was impatient).  So I added 2-3 TBSP of the hot coffee I had left in my coffee press to the mixture.  I also used 3 our of 4 cups of the powered sugar, because I like my frosting a little less on the sweet side.  Now I didn’t have the volume I needed to frost my whole cake.  When I looked for a frosting recipe I liked volume wasn’t the first thing on my mind.  So to increase the volume I whipped 1 cup of heavy cream with 2 tsp of cream of tartar into a whipped cream, no sugar at all.  My wife suggested the cream of tartar to keep the whip cream from deflating while it sat.  Then I folded the whipped cream into the frosting.  Next I committed another cardinal baking sin, I frosted the cake when it was just a tad warm in the center still.  Now the icing didn’t melt right off the cake, but it did get a little soft.

My 3 year old son received the first piece and gave me his stamp of approval.  My wife and I later had a piece and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Adam I think you’ll love it!