Sweet Yet Sour

Redemption Cake

Friday, April 1st, 2011 | Wedding Cake Try-outs

After the Caramel Peanut Topped Disappointment, I decided to put down Dorie Greenspan’s book for a while.  (It’s not you Dorie, it’s me!)  I decided that perhaps what I needed to do was work with a cake that I know and work on my cake skills.

I was craving the combination of chocolate and coconut for some reason so I resolved to make a chocolate cake with whipped cream frosting and coconut.  (Although in homage to “When Harry Met Sally”, and their wedding cake, I briefly considered making a coconut cake with chocolate sauce on the side.)

I need to work on my cake layer cutting skills; I have yet to master cutting a cake layer exactly in half – it’s always wonky.  And I don’t work much with whipped cream frosting – I’m much more of a ganache or buttercream kind of a girl.

So I began with my go-to chocolate cake recipe, my mom’s sourdough chocolate cake recipe.  Nellie, my sourdough start, has been recently enlivened by a new trick; I took her out of her ceramic container and let the start sit on the counter for about 24 hours in a bowl.  After the start fermented for that time, I used it, fed it with some more milk and flour and then put it back into the refrigerator.  Apparently this helps the yeast get all warm and happy; they do seem to have enjoyed their vacation away from the cold.

Anyway, the sourdough cake recipe is pretty easy (if you have the start):

Sourdough Chocolate Cake

1/2 cup of sourdough start

1 cup of tepid water

1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

1/4 cup dry milk powder

1 cup of sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

3 oz bittersweet chocolate chunks or chips

1/2 cup of vegetable oil

2 eggs

Sourdough start note: Prolonged contact with metal and plastic has been known to badly affect sourdough start.  If you are working with sourdough start, preferably keep it in a ceramic container and use only wooden spoons for stirring the start.  It’s fine if it only has brief contact with metal bowls and spoons, and once it’s mixed with other ingredients, it’s fine.  Hence, for this recipe I use a plastic bowl and a wooden spoon for mixing.

Mix together the start, water, flour and dry milk powder and set aside in a warm place for 2-3 hours.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees and butter two 9″ cake pans.  Dust with flour, tossing the excess, and then line the bottom with parchment paper.

When the sourdough start mixture has fermented to the point where it is showing small air bubbles, add the sugar, salt, vanilla, cinnamon and baking soda.  Meanwhile, melt the chocolate with the oil (I generally throw them together in a microwave proof bowl and microwave on high for 1 minute) and set aside to cool briefly.  Add to the cake batter when it has slightly cooled:

Beat in the eggs when the batter has cooled enough that it will not cook the eggs.  Divide evenly between the two pans and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

While I mixed the batter together, Henry “helped” me by going through one of the cabinets and tossing everything on the floor.

The cabinet holds all of our Tupperware and the kids’ cups and utensils, so it’s generally a great place to put him if I need to get a little work done. That is, until I need to spend a few minutes cleaning up everything from the floor, but it’s a small price to pay.

After the cake was done baking I set it on racks for 10 minutes to cool before removing them from their pans.  When the cake had entirely cooled I made a whipped cream frosting by whipping 1 cup of heavy cream, a little bit of coconut extract and about 6 tablespoons of sugar until it formed heavy stiff peaks. (I ended up having to make a second batch, since there wasn’t enough – oops!)

Then I very carefully cut each cake layer in half, frosted in between them, then frosted the whole cake.  After that I gently pressed sweetened flake coconut around the whole outside of the cake.

I didn’t do too badly on the cake layer cutting, but I need to work on it; what this picture does not show is that the other side is still a little wonky.  But that’s okay, because this cake was so good I’m willing to make it several more times so I can work on my skills and eat this cake.  The cake itself was light and airy, the whipped cream frosting was not heavy and the coconut added a nice touch.

Now that’s a “Redemption Cake” and for me, definitely a contender to be one of the wedding cakes…

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