If you don’t mind using a mix, this is the best cake I’ve ever made. It’s a little of both worlds…it uses a cake mix, but you fancy it up with extra ingredients.
Sinister Chocolate Cake
1 Devil’s Food cake mix
1 Package instant chocolate pudding mix (5.9oz size)
1 Cup sour cream
¾ Cup vegetable oil
4 Eggs
½ Cup hot water (I substitute strong, hot coffee for this)
2 Cups miniature chocolate chips (I think I actually use less than this…usually just under half a bag)
¼ Cup milk
Preheat oven to 350
Combine cake mix, pudding, sour cream, oil, beaten eggs, milk and hot water in a large bowl. Mix well, and then stir in chocolate chips. Pour into greased Bundt pan and bake for 50-55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Satiny Chocolate Glaze
¾ Cup chocolate chips (I substitute chocolate truffles)
3 Tablespoons butter
1 Tablespoon corn syrup
Combine ingredients in a small microwavable bowl. Microwave on high for 45 seconds. Remove from microwave and stir until melted. (microwave in 15 second intervals if more time is needed)
First, a little story. My mom knows a “cake lady” who makes awesome and cheap wedding cakes. I don’t know how she can tease buttercream into such shapes and designs, but she does. She made my mom this amazing layer cake with the best lemon cake EVER. Moist, flavorful, and just amazing cake. We had her do my sister’s wedding too. I looked forward to that cake for months, I say. Months. It didn’t disappoint.
I found out a few weeks later that she just makes her own icing. She uses a cake mix. I was, to put it mildly, surprised.
Cake mixes actually work pretty well. Experiment, but damn that lemon cake was good. I can have an expensive palate about a lot of things, but I could not tell the difference at all. Just learn to make really good icing.
My only exception to this is chocolate cake. I didn’t care as much for the cake lady’s chocolate cake. I think it’s something about the quality of the cocoa; the only chocolate cake I really went for was mom’s red velvet cake with dutch cocoa from Penzey’s. Chocolate cake mix is a bit too “flat” in taste.
It looks like a perfectly lovely cake, came out of the pan easily, after cooling, I have just iced it.
(With store bought icing. Silly me, I thought master the cake first, then worry about the icing! I must say I am surprised at the number who are recommending I use a mix. I will definitely consider it. But I’d at least like to successfully make a few from scratch first.)
We will be having it with tea, very shortly!
My hopes have been raised and I expect nothing but wonderfulness now!
I make a point of not telling people that the beer is in the cake, when I do, I get one of three responses.
1)No thanks, I don’t like beer
2)Dude, there’s beer in here, awesome
3)This cake is great, I can really taste the beer.
If they don’t know it’s there, they can’t taste it. Hell, even if you DO know it’s there, you can’t taste it…not even a little bit. It’s like saying you can taste the flour in cookies.
I disagree with folks about cake-mix cakes. They’re almost a different dessert entirely: they tend to have a much tenderer crumb and be significantly moister than most homemade cakes, but their flavor tends not to be nearly so good, by virtue of using bottom-shelf ingredients (in the case of yellow or chocolate cakes) and not using fresh ingredients (in the case of lemon and similar cakes). They’re closer to candy than to high-quality cake.
I enjoy them, but they’re not the same as a homemade cake IMO.
The Cake Mix Doctor by Anne Byrn is lots of fun to read. If anyone here liked cake from a mix and were prepared to eat each and every creation, I would bake my way through the whole book. It’s all in the frosting, of course. Why IS canned frosting so foul, by the way? I mean, I know it’s all chemicals and stuff, but you’d think by now ‘they’ would have learned to make something decent tasting instead of glop you’d put on your Betty Crocker baked in a 9x13 pan for a bunch of 8 year olds.
Yes, lots of bakeries use them, and the customers are none the wiser. There are commercial-grade mixes, they’re not just pulling up to Kroger and loading a case of Duncan Hines into the van. I have a relative who is a professional pastry chef – at one time he was the highest-paid wedding-cake baker in the state – and HE uses mixes for layer cakes.
Speaking of Duncan Hines, if one is going to use a mix, that’s the brand to get. If you can, get the kind that calls for you to add some real butter. That’s what said relative uses.
It’s true, a lot of people who have only ever had mix cakes think scratch cakes are weird. It’s a strange world we live in. Sarah Phillips has some scratch recipes that mimic the texture of mix cakes on her site baking911.com, but I think you have to join the site to get them now.
And, it’s also true, canned frosting is just not even worthy of the name. It’s sweet gunk in a can.
Well then, I have to ask for icing recipes now don’t I?
See I was making the cake from scratch and using store bought icing. Apparently this is not good?
Now I’m unsure about starting another thread or continuing to exploit this one. I’ll try here, I think, if I get no responses maybe I’ll start another.
So, how about it? How do you make your icing from scratch? Is it difficult or suitable for a beginner?
Add enough milk to make it into frosting (which won’t be much).
Another one - one cup chocolate in chunks, 1 c. cream. Heat cream. Pour over chocolate. Ganache. Whip it when cool to get frosting.
Replace peanut butter with butter and you have a basic buttercream. Add some melted chocolate (late or you just get melted butter) and its chocolate frosting.
1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
1/2 cup butter or margarine
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 cups sifted confectioners sugar (approximately 1 pound)
Optional: 3-4 tablespoons light corn syrup per recipe to thin for icing cake.
Cream butter and shortening with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy.
Keep icing covered with a damp cloth until ready to use.
For best results, keep icing bowl in refrigerator when not in use. Refrigerate in an airtight container, this icing can be stored 2 weeks.
Beat cream cheese and butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Stir in vanilla extract.
Ganache
If you like chocolate, ganache can go either way (heh, heh). Let it cool and beat it with a mixer, and it’s spreadable (if dense). Warm it up a little and pour it on, it’s a glaze that sets up beautifully. http://baking911.com/chocolate/ganache_truffles.htm
This is my favourite no-fail cake recipe - I usually don’t bother with the almonds
Peaches and cream cake:
1 1/2 c SR flour
3/4 c cream
3/4 c caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp Vanilla essence
1x425g can peach slices (drained and chopped)
110g pkt flaked almonds
1 - Sift flour into a large bowl, lightly beat in sugar, cream, eggs and vanilla with a wooden spoon until well combined.
2- Fold in peaches, pout mix into a greased and floured 23cm round cake tin.
3- Sprinkle top evenly with almonds. Bake in a moderate oven (180 degrees C) for 50-55 mins or until firm and coming away from sides of the tin.
4- Allow to cool in the tin for 5 mins. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool. Serve with cream. Store in an airtight container in the fridge
The cream cheese recipe I used for my cake (btw, you can’t taste the coffee… you couldn’t even taste the cinnamon I’d forgotten I’d put in the coffee when I made it that morning for my morning cuppa…) was simply
Here’s a very, very simple and FAST chocolate cake that I’ve been baking recently.
1 1/2 cups flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (e.g. Fry’s)
1 teaspoon baking soda (not baking powder)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups water
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons plain white vanilla
Preheat to 375 F. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a baking pan (9-inch round, 8-inch square, or 9x6-inch rectangle). In a small bowl, combine the water, oil, and vanilla, Pour into the dry ingredients and whisk with a fork to combine. Add the vinegar and stir just until the vinegar is distributed around the batter. (The batter will change colour.) Bake for 25-30 minutes.
That’s Alton Brown’s televised method. He said that we can’t match the chemists at Betty Crocker for making cake from scratch anymore but canned frosting is way behind the tech curve on matching from scratch.
The episode then goes on to teach how to make butter cream frosting.
