This week's Heavenly Cake Baker cake was free choice. I haven't been baking much lately - a combination of it being super hot and humid, having an unusually busy summer and then being on vacation in Montreal (joy!) - so I thought I would choose a cake that my fellow HCBers made while I was away. I chose the German Chocolate Cake from Rose's Heavenly Cakes. I've never made a German Chocolate cake before and this seemed pretty straightforward so I decided to give it a go.The cake was dead easy to make and had a very unconventional way of mixing. Normally cakes have milk which is added to the creamed butter/sugar/eggs mixture in 3 or 4 parts alternating with flour. This cake has no milk. Instead, it calls for oil and extra egg whites. The eggs are separated and the egg whites are added at the end. Worked like a charm!
I decided to make cupcakes instead of a layer cake and they came out nice and moist. They were chocolaty, without being too chocolaty (which can also be delicious!) and the crumb was light and spongy. The light texture went well with the heavier coconut frosting. The frosting was good, but very thick and sweet and I could taste the evaporated milk quite clearly. On the one hand I thought I might not have cooked it down enough (because of the flavor coming through) but on the other hand I thought I cooked it too long (because it was so thick). I used a flake coconut (instead of shredded) but I think the larger flakes would have worked better on a large cake instead of the cupcakes. Next time I might try part shredded and part large flakes. Or I might just use a buttercream frosting instead. My husband had a plain cupcake with vanilla ice cream on top and declared it delicious!
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| mise en place for the chocolate cake |
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| the cocoa is melted with boiling water and then the yolks and oil are mixed in... |
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| until it's light, fluffy and almost resembles a buttercream frosting |
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| then the flour is added and you get this thick sticky batter. Finally the egg whites are added (no photo) and you get a very thin, liquidy batter! |
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| finished cupcakes...light and moist |
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| mise en place for the coconut frosting |
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| evaporated milk, sugar and egg yolks get cooked, then coconut and pecans are added |
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| my husband said: "it looks like pasta" |
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| voila! |
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| delicious |
Bye for now...
Alice, I see you used King Arthur's unbleached cake flour. Do you like it? Have you ever compared it to the regular cake flour in terms of the resulting texture?
ReplyDeleteHi Jenn, no, I sure haven't! I should do a taste test some time - with the different flours and also cocoa powder. I tend to just use what I have on hand but would be curious to see how much of a difference the specifically-called-for ingredient makes.
ReplyDeleteThese look wonderful and chocolatey! From what I can tell judging from your pictures, using oil in this recipe is a good thing. The cupcake's texture doesn't look crumbly (the way it does for butter cakes sometimes). This cake is still on my todo list. Will have to bump it up higher. Everybody seems to love it.
ReplyDeleteBtw, do make the Blintzes. So easy. So good!
Thanks, Hanaa! The texture was very nice - light and tender without being dry. Unless you really wanted the coconut frosting, you might even want to make the cupcakes with a different frosting or event to have with vanilla ice cream.
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely looking forward to those blintzes. Yours looked delicious (and I still can't stop thinking about your apple turnovers either :)