Milk made from butter

My Dad recently had his birthday (although out of town without me) and I can never turn down an excuse for cake making, so I decided to embark on this recipe. I was nervous about the amount of coffee considering what a bad Seattlelite I am (hot chocolate any day), but this cake was so good and so moist and so did not taste like coffee that it was clearly worth it. So instead of doing the mountains of homework I have, I adapted this cake recipe. It originally called for a ganche frosting, but I decided to go head over heels with chocolate and pair it with fresh whipped cream instead.

Fun anecdote of the day: When I was shopping for buttermilk (which I did not find as the recipe below reveals) I asked for the help of a friendly Safeway employee. His reply, verbatim: Is that milk made from butter?
Also, it turns out that I suck at cake decorating. This is so structurally unsound and the first cake came out of the pan more in crumbs than a cake form. And by the time the cake had been frosted for half an hour three serious cracks had appeared. So I would follow Smitten’s advice on the parchment/wax paper because she clearly had a point.


Double Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Filling
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Cake Layers
3 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups hot brewed coffee
3 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
3 large eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup milk
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Brew coffee and cover chocolate chips with it, stirring until all melted and smooth. This takes a little while. In the meantime, beat the three eggs into a consistent mixture. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Add in all other ingredients. Grease three round pans (I had enough batter to fill two eight inch and one ten inch which was the best I could with available cookware) and line with wax/parchment paper then fill with batter. Bake at 300 for 50 minutes to an hour and ten minutes.


Raspberry Filling
12 oz frozen raspberries
¼ cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch

Thaw the raspberries and then blend (I had to add about a fourth cup of hot water to get a more liquidy mixture), push through a sieve (or whatever mesh you can improvise) into a pot to get rid of seeds. I found the back of a spoon pretty helpful. Add in the sugar and cornstarch and bring to a boil, letting thicken. Wait to completely cool to spread between layers.

Frosting
1 carton heavy whipping cream
Sugar to taste

Combine and mix until fluffy. Use to frost outside of the cake (I used as filling for the second layer to mix things up and put more raspberry on top).

This is really good. Like, maybe the chocolate cake I've ever had even if it is super ugly. Seriously, go make this, right now.

Happy Birthday Cupcakes!

Let me preface this: mixed reviews. As in some people thought that these were delicious, and some people were not big fans, and no one really asked for more than one, so on the whole, pretty average. Better when they first came out, and I think I paired the wrong sort of frosting with them so I’d either eat them as sweet muffins, or use a butter cream, so I’m not including the frosting recipe.

However, they were pretty adorable cupcakes, and I made them for my friend Ilana’s birthday (23!), even though she requested chocolate. Which, upon reflection probably makes me not the greatest friend, but I should get an ‘A’ for effort considering I foraged these raspberries. And that is illegal, according to a nice police office I chatted with hours after the fact. But you know, good to know. Anyways, all the recipes I found had jam in them and I wanted to use real fruit so that was something, and I very loosely based it off this recipe.

Adapted from We Are Not Martha

Lemon Raspberry Cupcakes
Makes 22

1 ¼ sticks butter
2 eggs
1 ¼ cup self rising flour
½ cup lemon juice
1 ½ cup raspberries
1 ½ cup powdered sugar

Beat butter (softened) and powdered sugar together until it is a fluffy. As a first warning, this is the weirdest batter, it is just so fluffy and light and I felt like I had beat egg whites and not made a batter. Then add in eggs, then flour and lemon juice slowly. Now, beat in softly by hand raspberries. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and spoon batter into cupcake/muffin pan. Mine needed to cook about 28 minutes, but the original only suggests 23 so keep an eye on them.