Chocolate cake

Growing up in China, I thought birthday cakes were pretty magical stuff. Like, on par with the mooncakes that we ate during the mid-autumn festivals or the garlic pickled in vinegar that would turn blue just in time for Chinese new year. On my birthdays, my granddad would pick me up early from school (and make me feel sooooo special because no one else got to leave school early that day) and take me to the state-run bakery and pick up my birthday cake. Sometimes, those standoffish middle-aged baker ladies would make it on the spot in front of a glass window through which I could watch the entire cake making process, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. She would put this simple yellow cake on a turnstile and proceed to cover it with a thick layer of frosting and flowers. At such a young age, I just couldn't comprehend how a tube of frosting can turn into flowers and other shapes -- it must be magic. Which is why I think people who make their own wedding cakes or that guy on ace of cakes are pretty much the most talented people ever.

Aside from the frosting, the fact that fancy cakes have multiple layers also makes a big difference. I've baked plenty of cakes for various occasions but stacking two cakes on top of each other always seemed more intimidating than it actually was. So for my stepdad's birthday, I decided to take that leap and make a two-layered cake.

I used my current favorite chocolate cake recipe, which I also used for Chris's birthday cupcakes junior year. It makes fluffy but intensely chocolate-y cake, although my personal preference is actually a denser and richer cake so I've been thinking about ways to tinker with its texture but still preserving its fantastic chocolate taste.



Regardless of its baked texture, this cake has the most delicious cake batter, hands down. The coffee and chocolate plus the slight tang of the buttermilk makes you not want to bake the cake at all but just sit on the kitchen floor with your very large mixing bowl in your lap, spatula in hand. 




I'm partial to chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. Combining cream cheese with butter in a 4:1 ratio plus confectioner's sugar to taste is my way to go.




Frankly, this being my first time frosting a cake, I found that it's actually pretty friggin' hard. The cake was crumbly enough (another reason to bake a denser cake) that little crumbles kept getting mixed into the icing and making the cake look more polka-dotted than a picture-perfect white.


I melted some leftover chocolate with butter and a little heavy cream and put the mixture in a ziploc bag to write with. Man, it was hard! At first, the frosting was too hard having just come out of the fridge so the icing looked like... little brown segments. After it softened from the heat of my hand it became almost too liquidy and came out too easily. (Teenage boys, insert bodily function jokes here) Plus my artistic abilities are pretty lacking in the first place, making my decorations more than a little silly.


All in all, nothing beats smelling like chocolate at the end of the day and having cake to eat for an entire week. Washing down a big slice of cake with milk first thing in the morning while still in your pajamas is pretty decent, too.