Yesterday was my birthday, so I just had to bake a cake. It took a while for me to decide what kind of cake I wanted and I ended up with a couple of recipes inside of a Ghirardelli 100% Cocao baking bar (that’s an unsweetened chocolate baking bar, in case you weren’t sure). It was for a one-bowl devil’s food cake and mocha buttercream.
This was going to be a bit of a dare, however, as the recipe asked for shortening – 1) I don’t have any shortening because 2) I don’t like shortening. I had read many comments from people who always substitute butter for shortening with minimal or barely noticeable differences, so I took a chance and substituted unsalted butter for the shortening.
What I thought would happen though, ended up happening. The recipe tells you to sift a flour mixture into a large mixing bowl, then put all the wet ingredients on top of that and mix for 2 minutes. That’s a really strange way to make cake batter, in my opinion. I thought that the butter wouldn’t mix in thoroughly and would leave butter chunks in the batter. And, well, I was right.
I didn’t want to keep beating the batter so I wouldn’t overbeat it, so I poured it into a pan and sat it on the stove over gentle heat for just enough time to melt the butter. I kept thinking I should have went with a different recipe, because this one would end up a disaster and I would have wasted a whole bar of that 100% cocao!
However, the cake ended up baking just fine, much to my surprise!
Note, number of candles not relative to my age (although some could argue that)
The buttercream was very strange to make as well, even though I did have all the required ingredients for that. The recipe says to melt a bar of 100% cocao. Then dissolve two teaspoons of instant coffee in 2 tablespoons of boiling water, and stir it into the melted chocolate. This turned the melted chocolate into a sticky clump of chocolate and my first thought was that this would not be able to mix into the frosting without clumping. And, well, I was right again.
I beat the frosting for quite a while (maybe two minutes?) at medium-high speed just to work out the clumps and this did actually work. It’s a very light and creamy buttercream with a strong mocha taste. I didn’t need to add all of the milk the recipe asked for, I left about 2 teaspoons (give or take) of the milk out. If I added more it would have been to wet to stick on the cake, I think!
So, how did this cake end up, overall? First I will say that I will not be making this cake again, even with using shortening. I personally don’t think this cake tastes all that great, but it isn’t bad. I feel like I wasted my nice unsweetened chocolate on this cake, though.
View printer-friendly PDF recipes here.
The cake does look good though. Happy Birthday!
Thanks! :-)
omg! it looks so moist!!