Chocolate Cake

Have I mentioned that I'm not a baker?

Honestly, baking really intimidates me. I often read about professional chefs who bow down to superb bakers and pastry chefs. This often leaves me scared to attempt to bake things.

However, at a recent trip to Watershed, I found myself highly impressed by the Very Good Chocolate Cake, the recipe of which we had at home in Scott Peacock's cookbook. So, not to be undone by a cake recipe, I decided to try to make this cake at home.

The extent of my baking experience includes dry packages of cookie and brownie mixes. I've never made a cake, not even from a box. But really, it's all about following the directions, right?

And so we went out shopping for all the missing ingredients: cake flour, unsweetened chocolate, semisweet chocolate, sour cream, and heavy cream. I set out chopping, mixing, and baking. I had my doubts all throughout the process. My cake batter looked very liquidy. (I have watched a couple cakes being baked at some point.) However, I was content to follow directions until the end.

My first screw up occurred with the line "Divide the batter evenly between two buttered and floured parchment-lined 9-inch cake pans." Now, perhaps to the rest of you, you know exactly what this means. What I did was line the round 9" cake pans with parchment before buttering and flouring them. Right. Well, certainly that accounts for my non-round cakes. Next time, I will cut out the parchment just for the bottom of the cake pans, before buttering and flouring them properly.

Into the oven the cake batters went, and 40 minutes later, they emerged beautifully moist and spongy as expected. I had a slight mishap when I turned the cakes over to cool. I blame my parchment disaster.

The frosting went well, and I even let it thicken as I was supposed to. Then I put the entire cake together, and, despite the "for best results, allow the cake to sit for 2 or more hours before slicing," we cut into it. Here's what that slice looked like. Hey, it was like 10pm, and I wanted to see how it tasted!

Day two after it had a chance to set with homemade whipped cream. Personally, I like the whipped cream with the expected vanilla extract, but a recent medication that J took has left him with a super sense of smell and has thrown off his entire sense of taste. He finds the vanilla too strong. Sigh.