Acid Cocoa

Self-rising flour can be a useful thing.  It saves on cabinet space and requires one less step in measuring.  I was really pleased with the result it produced in a Lemon Yogurt Cake, but I should have known something was amiss when a search for chocolate cake recipes using only self-rising flour and no other leavening agent produced very few results.

There's nothing inherently wrong with using self-rising flour in a chocolate cake, but when I tried one of the few recipes that met my 'self-rising flour only' requirement, this one from King Arthur Flour, I found it to be a bit dense, quite crumbly and a little dry.  There was a bit of an incident that could have been the root of the dryness... the oven got switched off (ah!).  I was standing right there to turn it back on, but as I found that I had to bake the cake much longer than I should have, it is possible that it lost more heat than I had realized.  It was not until later, however, that I noticed a review of the recipe mentioning the difficulty of cutting the cake without ripping it apart, and this leads me to suspect that the crumbling was not the fault of the oven.

I don't know what the source of the crumbling was, but I'm somewhat inclined to think that it might have been related to the use of self-rising flour with no added baking soda or baking powder.  Cocoa, it turns out, is acidic.  Who knew?  (Ok, many people I'm sure.  Joy the Baker did.  And now I do - and you!)  Both baking soda and baking powder, a derivative of baking soda, react chemically when mixed with an acid, and one by-product of this reaction is carbon monoxide that is released when exposed to the heat of the oven; it is this chemical reaction that serves to leaven the cake.  Another by-product of the reaction is the neutralization of the acid.  This, it seems to me (bearing in mind that I could be considered a chemist by no stretch of the imagination), is why many cake recipes call for both baking soda and baking powder.  As Craftsy explains it, this is 'a system of checks and balances. If a recipe contains baking soda to neutralize the acid in a recipe, it might not be enough leavening to give a decent lift to the baked good, but adding more baking soda might be too much in relation to the acid. Here’s where the baking powder comes in, to save the day by giving the recipe a little extra lift while maintaining a pleasant flavor.'  What they don't mention, however, is that the high pH of baking soda also enhances the Maillard reaction responsible for browning.  Huffington Post writer Amanda Greene explains the chemistry in some more detail and reports that cookies baked with baking powder substituted for baking soda, that is, cookies which did not have the Maillard reaction-enhancing high pH, tasted of their raw ingredients.

Because cocoa is an acid with a low pH, and there was no extra baking soda to neutralize it, it is possible that the Maillard reaction was affected.  I am not sure (again, barely an armchair chemist here) how this could have impacted the texture of the cake and caused it to become crumbly, but I certainly am curious!  Similarly, though the cake did rise without any additional leavener I wonder if that extra boost would have produced a fluffier result.

It's too bad experimenting with chocolate cake is so hard.  Better get back to the mixing bowl.

The Breakfast of Champions

Coffee cake is simple, unassuming, and not to be confused with layer cakes that happen to be flavoured with coffee.  That's right England, I'm talking to you.  (Et tu, Mary Berry?  I'm sure that cake is tasty, but... *sigh*).  The real beauty of coffee cake, however, is that it is a 'breakfast food'.  You can eat it first thing in the morning and feel no shame!  Not that I usually feel any shame when eating cake for breakfast, but some people might...  For those people: rejoice!

This coffee cake recipe is very straightforward, and can be found in the Recipe Box.  Where it came from originally, I do not know; a friend of my mom's gave it to her, and she gave it to me.  Maybe the friend made it up?  As she called it 'German Coffee Cake', however, and not something like 'Great Granny's Coffee Cake', I suspect it probably came out of a magazine or cookbook.  The original recipe (as I received it) recommends a 1/2 cup butter and a 1/2 cup margarine.  I think that there might be some idea (or fact, who knows? clearly not me) that margarine makes for a moister cake than butter does, because it is a hydrogenated oil and oil (liquid at room temperature) can at least lend the impression of a wetter cake because it's never a solid.  Margarine is a solid though, and I don't think it makes any difference.  I used one full cup of butter.  Yayyyy butter!

One thing that separates this coffee cake from the pack is its use of cocoa powder.  Lots of cakes use cocoa powder, it's true, but this is the first one I've met that just tosses it on top and throws it in the oven - no muss no fuss!  I was fairly concerned it was going to burn up there, exposed to the elements, but it didn't; it made a nice semi-chewy crust.  It also had a layer inside which sank to the bottom a bit, not sure why (I did run a toothpick through it to catch bubbles - that might have done it), but that was almost the best layer, the part you want to make sure of having in the last bite.  Mmmm...

It looked lovely in the oven (and I should know: I checked it six thousand times expecting it to be burnt):

And yeah, I admit to sneaking a bite or two before breakfast.

Pop-up Ty

popty, n., Welsh - bakery.  From Welsh pobi, 'to bake' and tŷ, 'house'.

pop-up tŷ, n., Gibberish - a mobile, home-based bakery, most likely to be found in Aberystwyth during the month of August.

Baking outside of the warm (sometimes hot, depending on how long you've been preheating the oven) confines of your own kitchen can be cumbersome.  Adjusting to a new layout is one thing, but unfamiliarity with the temperament of the oven (every baker knows they can be finicky) and a potential lack of tools can be more seriously problematic.  That is why, knowing that I'd be spending nearly the entire month in a student dormitory, I promised there would be no baking in August.

I lied.

It's hard to say no when someone asks nicely for cake.  It's harder to say no when you're sitting in the pub having a few pints.  So I said yes, realizing that I would need to select a simple cake and borrow equipment/a kitchen.

I based my cake selection on cream cheese frosting, because it's as easy as it is delectable.  Then I decided on chocolate cake, as it would give a similar effect to red velvet, but without the hassle of actually making red velvet.  I googled the pairing, and found this recipe, which was originally created by Ina Garten.  It seemed like a simple recipe, and I'm a fan of using coffee to enhance the flavour of chocolate cake, but I was really sold on it for the illegitimate reason that the blog's author lives in Corte Madera, which is a lovely town housing one of my favourite shopping centres...  I did say the reason was illegitimate.

Arranging baking facilities took a bit more planning.  The cake was to be for a reading group held at a friend's house, but unfortunately his kitchen was not the best-equipped for baking.  In the end I encroached on another friend's hospitality (and her baking pans and mixer) to bake the layers a day early (that is pop-up ty #1), and made the frosting on the night of the meeting in the less-baking friendly kitchen (pop-up ty #2).  Even if I had been home, I would have preferred to bake the cake itself ahead of time, in order to freeze it.  If I haven't mentioned it before, it is much easier to split frozen cake layers (if you choose to split them) than room temperature layers, because as nice as moist, fluffy room temperature cake is, it isn't terribly stable.  It is also a lot more crumbly than frozen cake, so frosting while frozen means fewer crumbs in the icing.

Down to the baking.

The recipes for chocolate cake and cream cheese frosting can be found in the Recipe Box, or find both on Marin Mama Cooks.  This recipe presented a trick for chocolate cake that I'd vaguely thought about in the past, but wasn't sure would work.  The trick is flouring the baking pans not with flour, but with cocoa powder.  Powdering the pans.  Makes them sound a bit like Victorian ladies...  In any case, I wanted to try it, and did that first.

Next you mix the dry ingredients together in one bowl, and the wet ingredients in another.

(Note: The wet ingredients haven't been mixed yet in this photo, I thought the various ingredients repelling each other were interesting).  This recipe calls for buttermilk, but if you don't have that on hand you can use approximately a tablespoon of white vinegar in a cup of milk as a substitute.  Allow the vinegar to sit in the milk for a few minutes to curdle, stir, and proceed with the recipe as written.  The recipe also called for two extra large eggs, but since I had medium eggs I used three.

The recipe as found in the blog then directs to add the wet ingredients to the dry, and I'm not sure why.  I did not do this, and I wouldn't recommend it unless, perhaps, you were stirring very gently with a spoon and adding the liquids a very little at a time.  If you're using any sort of electric mixer, as soon as you turn it on in a bowl-full of dry ingredients you're going to see a dusty explosion and, when the cloud clears, find yourself and probably everything else covered in a fine layer of cocoa-flour...  It seems unwise.  Mix only until just combined.  I was especially leery of over-mixing with this recipe, since I'd seen from the blog how liquid it ends up, in part because of the cup of coffee that is added after the wet and dry ingredients are combined.  I used a pour-over brewer, brewing directly into a measuring cup to make and measure to coffee.

Pour the hot cup of coffee into the batter and combine.  Don't be worried if it looks really runny; although it would be (to me) fairly concerning to see a batter so liquid, it evidently is supposed to be that way, and it does bake normally.

The resultant cake is very moist, but not dense.  I did adjust the oven for one layer, turning it down and extending bake time, but I believe that was because the oven was not a convection oven.

In the end I didn't have time to split the layers (I had to get to the text the reading group was working on, as it was [nominally] the reason the meeting was being held), but that allowed me to put a thicker layer of frosting between the cake layers, and extra cream cheese frosting is certainly no hardship.  The reading group was happy, and so was I.  Watch out for a pop-up tŷ opening in a kitchen near you.

Excuses Excuses

Excuses aren't strictly necessary for cake (eating it or baking it, in my opinion).  Nevertheless, I had one for my mocha almond marble cake: I ran out of ice cream.  If we're fairly like-minded (and if you're bothering to read this, we probably are), you may be nodding in agreement and thinking 'Ah yes, a dire situation'.  Alternatively, you may be thinking that this is the least sensible reasoning you've encountered this week (in which case I'd say you're having a good week!).  In the event that you're thinking the latter, never fear, I have an excuse for my excuse: to obtain more ice cream I would have had to get dressed and go to the store, whereas to obtain cake, I only had to bake it.  No need to get out of my pyjamas.  (I should note that I am taking for granted two things here: 1., that pyjamas aren't clothes, even in the grocery store, and 2., that any evening spent at home requires dessert.  I hope that you'll agree with at least one of these two statements*).

I've reached a point in my life where, small as my cupboard is, it almost always contains all of the ingredients necessary to make some form of cake, cookies or brownies; good for my evening dessert requirement, not so great for my arteries.  But you can't have your cake and eat it too!...  Anyway.  I had a look through Everyday Easy Cakes & Cupcakes to see if anything for which I had all of the ingredients struck me, and I found a marble cake (p. 55).  It looked good, sounded easy, but since I hadn't actually used a recipe from this book before I thought I'd compare it to recipes from Martha Stewart and Joy of Baking.  Joy of Baking called for melted chocolate rather than cocoa powder as in the other two recipes, but since it was outnumbered and I had more cocoa powder than solid chocolate it was vetoed on that count.  Bake temps were the same across the board (350F), but Everyday Easy Cakes made me a bit uneasy with its hour-long bake time, as opposed to 35 minutes on the low-end of Joy of Baking and 50 minutes on the top end of Martha's recipe.  Ultimately I opted to use Martha's recipe as my basis (again), but I made some changes, beginning with one that might seriously cause you to question my excuse for this cake, if you haven't already.

Joy of Baking made the suggestion to add a tablespoon of brewed coffee to the chocolate portion of the batter to enhance the chocolate flavour.  When I read that, I remembered a trick from my days as a cake decorator: the baker would add espresso to one of the cakes (I think it was the flourless chocolate cake) to bring out the chocolate that much more.  Thus I got it in my head that I wanted to add not coffee, but espresso.  Of course, I don't own an espresso machine (much to my constant chagrin), so if I wanted to move forward with my caffeinated plans it was going to have to wait until the next day when I could get the espresso from town.  So much for my evening dessert.  The decaf tea that I settled for instead was a poor substitute, but I think the cake was worth the wait.

I only needed a tablespoon of espresso, but I got a double shot because, why not?  I might have needed the extra jolt for caking!

Martha's recipe calls for baking in a 9"x5" loaf tin, but I have an 11" tube pan, so it was necessary to double the recipe (what a shame).  Unfortunately, doubling the recipe meant that I was unexpectedly a bit short on caster sugar.  I made up the difference with about a 1/4 cup of light brown sugar, and if it made any difference at all I would suggest that it was a positive one; I tasted a bit of the batter pre-flavouring with extract and it was tasty.  How much of that should be attributed to flavour added from the light brown sugar as opposed to flavour from the buttermilk I'm not sure, but it may be worth experimenting.  I combined the two sugars well, breaking up the clumps formed by the light brown sugar as much as possible, before beating them into the butter.

I think the somewhat sticky light brown sugar did prevent the butter and sugar mixture from attaining a truly fluffy consistency, but I don't think it ultimately affected the consistency of the cake itself, and it all looked normal when I beat in the eggs.  I refrained from adding the vanilla extract at this stage because I wanted it only in the chocolate half of the batter; the other half was to be almond.  I didn't have buttermilk on hand, I never do, I just make it by adding white vinegar to milk in a 1 tablespoon to 1 cup ratio (that is, 1 tablespoon vinegar to 1 cup milk) and letting it sit for a couple minutes.  While that was sitting I combined the flour, baking powder and salt.  I chose to use plain flour rather than cake flour as Martha recommends because I wanted a denser cake.  Then I mixed half of that into the butter and sugar, then beat in the buttermilk, and finished off with the second half of the flour, baking powder and salt mix.  Next I split the batter in half.  I wanted half and half, rather than the slightly-more-vanilla-slightly-less-chocolate suggested by the recipes.

I added the extracts to the respective halves, vanilla going to the batch that was to be chocolate, and almond going to the other.  I was eager to try an almond extract that I had recently purchased because of its label and place of manufacture, and almond swirled with espresso and chocolate sounded mouthwatering to me...

Since adding the extracts after the split meant an additional mixing step I was careful to incorporate them without over-beating; I would certainly still eat a flat cake, but it was preferable that it rise.  As it turns out my fears were probably groundless, as I wound up having to mix the chocolate batch significantly more than the almond one.  When it came to the cocoa powder, Martha said to mix a 1/4 cup into 2 tablespoons boiling water.  The idea is to create a paste that will be easily mixed into the batter and prevent the formation of lumps of cocoa powder; the same technique is used for making red velvet cake, except in that case you substitute red dye for the water.  I was doubling the recipe, so I mixed a 1/2 cup cocoa powder into 3 tablespoons boiling water plus my 1 tablespoon of espresso.  This was all well and good, except the resultant paste was far too thick.  I knew this, I knew that I should add more water, and yet I opted to ignore my instincts and plopped the mass into the batter.  Mistake.  Unsurprisingly, I ended up with lumps of paste rather than lumps of powder.  I broke up as many of these as I could on the sides of my bowl with my spoon, and in the end it wasn't too bad, but I did have to mix far more than I would have liked to, and the chocolate batter was significantly looser than its almond counterpart.  Thankfully it rose anyway, just as well as the almond.

To get the marble effect, you have to spoon the two batters in a checkerboard pattern:

And then swirl (I used an offset spatula, but a knife would also work):

And it all rose!

And I really enjoyed it, both with a splash of brandy for dessert that night, and with a cup of coffee for breakfast in the morning.

* Ok, I admit it, I've gone to the grocery store in my pyjamas.  And yes, I've done so on more than one occasion.