(slight hijack)
What is a Chocolate sundae then? Chocolate or vanilla ice cream? Is Chocolate Cake different?
(/hijack)
I have more recently seen Yellow cake with chocolate frosting labeled as a “Diner Cake”
and I have always named my cakes by the dominate flavor, regardless of batter or frosting flavor.
You’re very welcome! I’m so glad to know that it turned out well for you, I’m always nervous when I share a recipe for a baked good, that it’ll turn out poorly and I’ll be thought a bad baker whose judgment is questionable. I might have to make a pound cake tomorrow to celebrate that yours turned out well! 
Oh, for Chrissake! Slap those yellow cake layers together with some custard, put on the chocolate icing, and when come back, bring Boston Cream Pie.
Thank you!
I didn’t realize it was cooked (not that I would notice, being a little kid), but that sounds about right. It didn’t indicate if the finished product had a thin “crust” or not.
It figures that something I thought would probably be very easy would turn out to be more complicated (for a non-cook).
No double boiler. No knowledge of how much water to use to make sure none of it touches the top pan. No intuition of when this beating in of vanilla is supposed to take place. No indication of what to do with it after said 7 minutes is over (leave it in the pan to cool? Put it on the cake immediately?)
And why, for the love of god, would someone please tell me, WHY SALT?? Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! Yuck!!
Chocolate sundaes…wow, EX_913 has a point.
Equipose, salt is added to all sorts of food, even sweet foods. If you look at the labels of any ready-made desserts, you’ll find they’re doused with tons of salt. Just about any packaged or pre-prepared food you can find will come with added salt, simply because salt is a cheap and easy way to enhance the flavor of just about any food.
The amount of salt added to that recipe…1/8 of a teaspoon…is very small, not enough to impart a salty taste to the frosting. But it will enhance the other flavors and round them out.
If you’re worried about salt intake for health reasons, by all means leave out the salt. But you will also have to stop eating most pre-packaged foods, even ones that don’t taste salty, and do a lot of label reading until you find brands that don’t have much added salt.
If you’re worried about a salty taste, that amount of salt isn’t going to make the frosting taste salty, just “better” in some indefinable way. If your tastebuds are particularly sensitive to salt, then go ahead and reduce or cut out the salt.
Oh, one more thing, about the vanilla. Lots of recipes will have you add vanilla at the very end, because vanilla flavoring is volitile and will vaporize after long cooking. So for liquidy things, where you CAN add vanilla after cooking it is much more effective to do so, so you don’t have to use as much vanilla.
So for this recipe, after the cooking is finished and the pot taken off the burner, add the vanilla and stir it in. You could add it any time during the cooking process, but you’d have to add more to get the same amount of vanillainess.
Oh, if you don’t have a double boiler (I don’t either), just use a regular saucepan and a large glass pyrex bowl. Put about an inch of water in the pot and put the bowl on top…you’ll be able to see if the water is touching. For most things, this setup is actually superior to a dedicated double-boiler setup.
Feh. When I bake a cake from scratch, it, too, has the consistency of foam rubber and the flavor of sweetened latex. Why the hell should I eschew the convenience and the SUPERIOR flavor of a cake mix for the toil and uncertainty of cooking from scratch? For approval from the likes of you? :dubious:
Or, you can forget the double boiler all together. I learned this watching some chefs in a gourmet restaurant in Scotland making hollandaise. This is not a tip for the beginner cook, but you can set your stove for a low flame and whisk away holding your saucepan or bowl a few inches about the flame. If you’re worried, you can move the pot in and out of the flame area. It takes a little practice (not as much as you’d think), but speeds up cooking significantly. Of course, you have little room for error if you do it this way, but it does work.
I agree! Kat, you are hereby invited to my house for your birthday and we will make whatever cake you choose.
Try this part again.
Open your mind, man! Cream cheese is a versatile and wonderful food that can do much more than simply grace your bagel.
perks up Really? You sure you won’t mind an extra person at your house that day?