This week's baking adventure is a chocolate cake and to be frank, the photo in the book really didn't appeal to me and it isn't a cake that I'm familiar with, so I probably would have passed over it to, maybe, next week's cake (that one looks nice!). I'm really glad I didn't avoid it though. Not so much because it was a huge hit. The cake itself was popular, which is good, because if you've been following my family's reaction to Rose's chocolate cakes, the last couple have been a bit too strong in flavour. This one was amazing. The chocolate taste was nicely balanced and the cake was light yet moist. It was perfect for my family and I was relieved to find a chocolate cake that everyone liked. The icing, on the other hand, got mixed reviews. My son liked it but the rest of us found it way too sweet. I don't think I'll be revisiting the icing.
The main reason that I'm glad I didn't skip this cake is that I'm learning so much about baking cakes. There seem to be new techniques every week: adding boiling water to cocoa to release the flavour, oil instead of butter, adding unwhipped egg whites to the batter, heating sweetened condensed milk with egg yolks. I seem to never know what's going to be asked of me next.
The baking of the cake is quite interesting. Rose tells you the batter will be thin and only fill a quarter of the pan - true. Then it will rise up and grow to the top of the cake pan - true. Then it will sink slightly in the middle - all true. And then unlike other cakes, once removed from the oven you have to remove it immediately from the cake pans to cool. When you do this, it feels like a sponge and you get a hint of its light texture.
As one of the family doesn't like nuts, I included the pecans on only one side of the cake. They are meant to be mixed into the icing but I didn't think that would give the nut hater a good enough visual message. I know it looks a bit odd to have a half-decorated cake, but aside from that, I also found the yellow, dripy icing a bit creepy. Looking back at the book, it wasn't quite so dripy. Anyway, next week's cake looks nice.
