it’s cake! in celebration of the blog’s birthday (see the very first post here), i decided to bake one of my favorite cakes: white layers with chocolate frosting. so simple but so good. the cake recipe comes from nick malgieri’s fabulous book perfect cakes. (you could buy this book with your amazon gift card!! make sure you leave a comment this week if you haven’t already!!) when i make this cake, i usually cover it with the dark chocolate ganache recipe also included in chef malgieri’s book, but i didn’t have any cream. and it was snowing – again! and i was too lazy to go to the store. so i covered it with a good old fashioned confectioner’s frosting. not ganache but definitely de-lish!
to the cake first! you will need 2 cups of all-purpose flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 and 1/2 sicks of unsalted butter, 1 and 1/2 cups sugar, 2 teaspoons of vanilla, 6 egg whites and 3/4 cup of milk.
you will also need2 8 inch cake pans. spray them with pam and line the bottoms with parchment. yeah i know it’s a pain in the rear, but it really helps release the cakes when they are done.
mix the flour, baking powder and salt together and set aside. cream the butter and sugar for about 5 minutes. you want it nice and pale.
while the mixer is doing it’s thing, take the milk, egg whites and vanilla
and whisk them together until combined.
see? nice and pale! kinda like me this time of year.
add a third of the flour mixture and combine just a bit. you don’t want to overwork the batter. then add half of the milk/egg mixture. repeat until all the flour mixture and egg mixture are incorporated.
mmm. cake batter.
pour into the prepared pans
and smooth out the tops.
bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minute or until they look like this…
after you are done licking the beater from the cake batter, it’s time to make the frosting…
you will need 1 and 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter, a pinch of salt, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, 1/2 cup of cocoa powder, 4 1/2 cups of powdered sugar and about 3 or 4 tablespoons of milk or cream (which i don’t have.)
cream the butter with the salt and then add the vanilla.
sift the coca powder and powdered sugar. this is important beacause you want the frosting to be nice and smooth. lumpy frosting is gross.
add the powdered sugar and cocoa powder a little at a time adding a tablespoon of milk with each addtion until you get this heavenly mass of chocolate, buttter and sugar.
line your cake plate with 4 strips of parchment. yes, like i said before the parchment thing is a pain, but it keeps your plate nice and purdy.
frost the middle which is actually the top…
ok now it’s the middle. hey a hamburger!
then the sides…
then the real top!
i cut this just so i could show you how it looks..
not that i would ever even remotely consider eating cake at 8:45 in the morning. i just wouldn’t. shouldn’t. did.
peace – jodi
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