My favorite cake is hands-down chocolate cake. You just can’t go wrong with it.
Today’s recipe is the “Easiest Chocolate Birthday Cake” from Bon Appetit feat. Chris Morocco. You know that someone does a good job of instructing when you can “hear” them while you perform the task at hand. Or maybe I just re-watched the YouTube video too many times…I’ve made this recipe a couple times before, once for my fiance’s birthday (which he forgot about of course). The chocolatey cake paired with the delicious cream cheese-based frosting make for the perfect combo. Also, it’s only one tier, so need to get complicated!
1. Combining the dry ingredients
Here, you see me combining the dry ingredients (I forgot to whisk them together) including sifted cocoa powder because Chris Morocco advised it.
Side note: rather than tracing the circumference of the pan, I recommend using the folded method where you align it to the center of the pan and cut a rounded edge. It’s hard to describe without seeing for yourself, but I promise you it’s the easiest method
2. Combining the wet ingredients
I whisked together the wet ingredients and combined with the dry mix. Not sure if it’s because I do something wrong, but my mixture does not get as thick and pasty as Chris’ does in the video…it does get thicker, but more like an oily cookie dough.
3. Finishing the cake batter
I heated the milk until I saw “wisps” as Chris directed and mixed into the batter. It’s fascinating to watch how the thick mix turns into more of a thin cake batter.
Then, I poured the cake batter into my readied cake pan to be baked!
4. Making the frosting
Starting with a chocolate ganache, I melted semi-sweet chocolate chips into heavy cream over a double boiler (I still need to get an actual mixing bowl rather than use one of my wide bowls that I typically use for eating. Then, I made the cream cheese base of the frosting, using the electric mixer to beat it into a fluffier consistency.
Then, I beat the chocolate ganache into the cream cheese mix until it was a thicker consistency. The recipe warns against over-mixing, so unfortunately, I think I ended up under-mixing for fear of over-mixing. Still tasted delicious though! I also put it into the fridge while the cake finished baking (I forgot cakes take awhile to bake!) to help set it a bit more.
5. Assembling the cake
Ta-da! Ignore the holes at the top of the cake – I may have poked too many with a skewer.
I couldn’t wait for the cake to cool long enough, so I may have put on the frosting earlier than I should have…oops. So the frosting was a little goopy and sliding around, but luckily had enough structure to it to stay put for the most part.
As always, the cake was delicious! Funny enough, I could actually understand what Brad meant in the video when he commented that he wanted “less cake.” I may be wrong, but I think he meant that he wanted more of the cream cheesy frosting because it’s such a great contrast to the drier sweeter cake.