I have never made a chocolate cake from scratch. I was intimidated by chocolate. You had to melt it, and if you spilled any (as I am wont to do) it would make a huge mess. So I stayed away. But a couple of years ago, I read Ruth Reichl’s amazing book My Kitchen Year where she described an enormous chocolate cake that ‘could cure anything.’ And that cake has been floating around in my imagination since then. This week I had a break from a big writing project, a planned weekend of recuperation, and a nephew’s birthday: the trifecta of reasons to get over my chocolate phobia and make a giant chocolate cake. It’s easy. It’s fun. And it’s really the best chocolate cake you will ever eat.
Ingredients for cake
1-1/8 cups unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
¾ cup whole milk
1½ teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
1½ cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1½ cups dark brown sugar
1½ cups white sugar
6 eggs
Prepare pans. The original recipe uses 13’ X 9” pans, but I didn’t have those, so I used 12” round pans I used for the middle tier of a wedding cake. They worked well.
Butter pans and use parchment for bottom. Use cocoa to ‘flour’ the pans, or flour.
Preheat oven to 350.
Mix cocoa with 1 ½ cups boiling water until it is smooth. Add vanilla and milk, set aside.
In a stand mixer, beat butter and brown sugar and white sugar until creamy. Add eggs to butter/sugar mixture 1 at a time. Beat well.
Whisk together flour and baking soda and salt.
Mix flour mixture and cocoa mixture into butter alternating a third of each. The mixture will be slightly liquid.
Pour batter into prepared pans and bake for 25 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.
Let cool before frosting.
Frosting
5 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 cup whipped cream cheese
2½ cups confectioner’s suga
r ¾ cups (1½ sticks) unsalted butte
r 1 teaspoon vanilla
Melt chocolate in microwave or double boiler. Let cool enough to touch.
In mixer, beat butter and cream cheese until combined. Scrape in chocolate and add vanilla, and then beat in confectioners sugar until you have a good consistency for frosting.
I needed two batches for my 12 inch round cake.
To build cake: Remove cake from pan. I put it on a cardboard round, and then place this on parchment to aide clean-up. Frost this layer. Then remove send layer from pan (Use of a cardboard round or plate can be helpful) and place carefully on frosted layer. It’s ok if it cracks a bit—your frosting will cover this up. Frost sides and then top. Decorate however you want.