Paper Palate

If someone asked me today where to find a piece of chocolate cake, I would simply point them to the nearest restaurant or bakery. In this chocolate-obsessed country, any restaurant or bakery worthy of a dessert menu or dessert display would have at least one chocolate offering, which is almost always a chocolate cake. This cake would likely have an exotic or trendy name like death by chocolate, chocolate ganache, chocolate lava, flourless chocolate, or another name with fanciful words that invariably imply sophistication and richness.

In a different scenario, if I had encountered a person looking for a piece of a simple, traditional, spongy, and moist chocolate cake, so tender that it crumbles easily under the weight of a fork and yet strong enough to support a huge mound of fluffy icing piled unabashedly on top, I’d be stumped. I would know the cake exactly. It had been a birthday favorite of mine and many of my friends growing up. Its towering presence had the power to quiet a roomful of screaming children and to induce us to clear our plates without any threat of punishment. But somehow this cake had faded in popularity as our palates became “sophisticated” and we became infatuated with haute chocolate confections. It had been long since I’ve thought about this childhood favorite. Actually, I haven’t given it much thought at all until I opened up the March/April issue of Cook’s Illustrated, my favorite and most secret read.

I must now take a little time to explain my feelings towards this magazine so the gravity of my undertaking the chocolate cake recipe from the current issue is understood. You see, I have not dared to make my subscription to Cook’s known to many lest they think me an expert cook savvy in all things gastronomical. The truth is that I know the basics of the kitchen and love to experiment with my food. While magazines like Gourmet and Bon Appetit strive to encourage culinary curiosities in people like me with beautiful photos and promises of success, Cook’s ignores my fears and speaks unapologetically of processes and techniques. And, Cook’s has absolutely no colored photos, not even one for the cover to compete with the sea of food porn, among which it is displayed on the magazine racks. In short, Cook’s intimates me. So it is almost incomprehensible that despite this intimidation, I LOVE to read this magazine. Its lack of desire to please demands judgment based only on its content. In every issue, only a few selective recipes are included and every one of them appears to draw from Cook’s tremendous repertoire of cooking knowledge. The recipes seem to be painstakingly tested and retested to achieve the best results, which are left only to be conjured up in your imagination. I have been intrigued many a times by the recipes and thought about pursuing them. Each time I chickened out when my palms got too sweaty.

Something about the old-fashioned chocolate cake recipe in the current issue of Cook’s gave me enough courage to pull out my mixing bowls. Maybe it’s the fact that I really have no idea where to get such a cake, even here in the south, where tradition is more carefully preserved. I have found cakes with the right spongy and moist crumb, but they would always be covered by a weighty cream cheese icing and not the fluffy stuff that smears all over your face. With my newfound courage, I dived right into the making of this cake as I have learned from my previous cases of cold-feet that it’s best not to think too much about the consequences.

Deducing from Cook’s long explanation, the secrets to a moist and airy cake that is also structured enough to hold up the icing depends on a chocolate pudding, careful ribboning of eggs and sugar, and proper sequence in the incorporation of the wet and dry ingredients. The chocolate pudding is nothing more than a molten mixture of chocolate, hot water to “bloom” the chocolate, and sugar. The melting process was not difficult, but the look of the end result raised some doubts. My “pudding” didn’t have the consistency of any pudding that I have ever seen. It was neither smooth nor creamy. However, a rereading of Cook’s long description confirmed that the “pudding” should look “thick and glossy,” which seemed to describe what I had.

I experienced similar doubts with the ribboning process, which required beating the eggs with sugar until the “they form ‘ribbons’ (thin strands of batter).” Cook’s suggested 2 to 3 minutes for this process. At the 3 minute mark, I could drag the whisk above the batter and draw a “ribbon” but it immediately disappeared into the batter before I could capture it in a photo. To be on the safe side, I went on to whisk the mixture for another minute or two before deciding that the description “until they form” referred only to the formation of the ribbons and did not imply that the formed ribbons must hold.

The incorporation phase went smoothly enough, if a bit tedious. Many a times I had to fight the urge to put in more than one tablespoonful of butter at a time or add all the buttermilk at once. Having gone through the somewhat laborious process and observed the step-by-step incorporation closely, I came to the conclusion that the entire sequence had been carefully considered and was not a scam to deter the inexperienced. For example, each time the flour mixture was added, the batter looked as though it was threatening to clump up, but soon thereafter blended into a smooth mixture. Same for when portions of the buttermilk were added, the batter became slightly diluted each time without creating separate puddles. The real moment of truth came when the cakes were taken out of the oven looking heavenly after exactly 30 minutes at 350 degrees. When pressed, the cakes sprung back with a bounce and held their shapes. The few crumbs that the tester dragged out had a deep chocolate flavor and were incredibly moist.

While rejoicing over the success of the cakes, I slowly warmed up to the task of making the much dreaded frosting. Don’t get me wrong, I love a mound of well-whipped and billowy frosting as much as the next person who has been inducted into the sweet American tradition. After all, grandma would have been ashamed to bring a “naked” cake to the table. What I dreaded was recreating the often coyly sweet or overtly rich frosting that I often encounter here in the south. My fear turned out to be baseless under Cook’s superb guidance. I was led to create, for the first time, a reverse ganache that was essentially produced by pouring cold cream into molten chocolate. The whole mixture is then cooled in an ice bath to almost solidification and then whipped into the fluffiest and deeply chocolaty frosting any birthday girl could ever desire.

Almost immediately upon frosting the cake, pieces were cut and devoured while standing in my kitchen. It turned out picture or no picture, Cook’s well-researched recipe and carefully written instructions were enough to guide the novice baker to create her own picture of perfection, which was, interestingly, worth a thousand words.

Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake

Cake
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, very soft, plus extra for greasing pans
1 ¾ cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting pans
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
¼ cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
½ cup hot water
1 ¾ cups sugar
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 large eggs, plus 2 large egg yolks

Frosting
16 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
8 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons corn syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon salt
1 ¼ cups cold heavy cream

To make the cake layers:
1. Place oven rack in the middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour two 9-inch round cake pans.
2. Combine chocolate, cocoa powder and hot water in a double boiler or a bowl set over a pot of hot water until chocolate is melted, about 2 minutes. Add ½ cup sugar to the chocolate mixture and stir until thick and glossy, 1 to 2 minutes. Let cool.
3. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Combine buttermilk and vanilla in another bowl. Whisk eggs and yolks on medium-low until combined. Add remaining 1 ¼ cups sugar to the egg mixture and whisk on high until fluffy and lightened in color. This is when the ribbons form.
4. Add cooled chocolate mixture to egg mixture and mix on medium until thoroughly incorporated. Add softened butter one tablespoon at a time and incorporate after each addition. Add about 1/3 of flour mixture followed by half of buttermilk mixture, mixing until incorporated after each addition. Repeat until all ingredients are incorporated.
5. Divide batter evenly between prepared cake pans and smooth the edges with spatula. Bake cakes until toothpick inserted into the center comes out with a few crumbs, about 25-30 minutes. Cool cakes in pan for 15 minutes, then invert onto wire rack to cool to room temperature.

To make frosting:
1. Melt chocolate in double boiler or bowl set over a pot of simmering water. Remove from heat and set aside. Heat butter in small sauce pan over medium low until melted. Increase heat to medium, then add sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, and salt and stir until sugar is dissolved, 4 to 5 minutes.
2. Combine melted chocolate, butter mixture, and cream in a bowl. Cool the bowl over an ice bath and stir mixture until frosting is thick and just beginning to harden on the sides, about 70 degrees. Beat frosting on medium high until light and fluffy.

To frost the cakes:
1. Place one cake layer on serving platter. Spread 1 ½ cups frosting evenly across top of cake with spatula. Place second layer of cake on tip and spread remaining frosting evenly over top and sides of cake.