Fallen Chocolate Cake

Not many posts ago, I told you about my 23rd birthday cake. I explained to you that a baker (or at least this baker) prefers to make her own birthday cake, because it's a gift to herself; because she finds catharsis in the process; because she's a little bit controlling. You watched as I greedily snatched the cake duty, and all the love that goes into it, from those in my life who would have liked to bake my birthday treat.

Well, folks: a year has passed. The Earth has completed yet another revolution. I am twenty-four, and just as greedy as ever.

I was under the assumption that Megan making her own birthday cake was an established tradition after one year. I had already taken it for granted. So when I casually mentioned to my sister what I was considering for this year's cake, I did not expect the startled response that I got.

"You're going to make your own birthday cake?"

"I did last year."

"You should let someone else make it."

That "someone else" was in front of me, nodding expectantly with wide eyes and a goofy smile. It was hard to tell which of us wanted it more. So I wavered, ever so slightly:

"I don't know. Maybe..."

Over the next week she wore me down, until I finally relented. She would make my cake.

Regret inevitably followed. I felt like I'd let myself down, like I'd surrendered when I ought to have stood my ground. Days later, Caitlin gave me a chance to take back the cake.

"If you really want to make your cake, I could wait to --"

"Okay."

The cake was mine again! And this time I wasn't letting go.

I think we're well past that time when a cake with no flour is considered wanting; we are all well aware of what magic can happen when gluten isn't around. But flourless chocolate cake is something else entirely. It has disassociated itself from the broad category of flourless baked goods - that is, baked goods that are customarily made with flour, but can exist in almost identical form without flour - and it has become its very own category. Really, it shouldn't even be called cake. 

Cake, in its most familiar form, is light and spongey. It becomes so by way of several chemical and physical processes, but it's the gluten from flour that is largely responsible for giving a cake structure as it expands. Without flour, the cake needs support from other ingredients. For this one, it's the eggs that do the heavy lifting. Whole eggs and egg yolks introduce protein into the batter, creating a similar, albeit weaker, structural network. Then egg whites are whipped and folded in to incorporate air, the physical leavener. That, plus steam, is what makes this cake rise. And rise it did.

Out of the oven, the cake's delicate surface had risen above the rest of it, creating a slivered portal into its dark netherworld. 

Then, true to its name, it fell.

The result is an intensely moist, dense vehicle for a rich chocolate taste that's both sweet and dark. Cake just doesn't seem to do it justice. I'd call it more of a brownie-torte. Top it with a smooth pile of mascarpone whipped cream, and you might even toss cheesecake into the mix. Who's to say, really?

I wanted so badly to get this shot in the light of day. But unless I decided to have a birthday lunch instead of dinner, I would have to accept a lamplit cake.
A lesson on life: opt for living it properly over capturing it properly.

And now, a lesson on mascarpone.

DO:

Add it to your whipped cream whenever possible, especially if it's going to top a dessert that has a strong presence to begin with. It makes the whipped cream thicker, creamier, and just a little bit sweeter.

DO NOT:

Bring what's left of it to work the next day and, in lieu of a proper lunch, eat it with crackers and raspberry jam, thinking blithely that you've got it all figured out. You don't. You will feel disgusting later, and over the next 24 hours you will gag whenever you think of it, unable to shake the cloying taste memory.

I'm sorry to have ended with that; I feel it was my duty as someone who has learned the hard way. Just know this: when used correctly, mascarpone will take you to a very happy place. When used in due fashion, it is worthy of you, your family, and your birthday cake.

A Baker's Birthday

I spent the better half of my birthday, and the day before it, in the kitchen. That may sound kind of sad, depending on your own relationship with kitchens. But it just couldn't be avoided. When you're a baker, you make your own birthday cake. 

Okay, I can't speak for all the bakers. If I did this day in and day out, maybe I'd let someone else make it for me. Likewise, if I weren't quite so controlling, I could maybe let someone help. But it's more than that, I think. Baking a classic two-layer cake from start to finish was like my birthday gift to myself. I wanted to take my time. I wanted to get to know this cake. I wanted to own it. And I'm a little bit controlling.

This is a chocolate sour cream frosting. No butter, and the only sugar comes in the form of a bit of corn syrup. The frosting is sour, but it turned out to be pleasant in concert with the yellow cake. If I make it again, I'll replace some of the sour cream with more chocolate.

By 4 in the afternoon, we were properly acquainted. Then I made pizza.

In the past year I've gotten into homemade pizza. I had this one go-to recipe, not because I had any particular allegiance to it, but because I'd never bothered to search for others. Then I came across an article on the secrets to incredible homemade pizza in Bon Appetite. It starts with a no-knead dough of flour, yeast, salt, and water that rises for 18 hours. Yes! Eighteen! And that's pretty much the extent of it. The rest is the little things, like heating your olive oil with garlic cloves; turning your oven to its highest temperature and letting it heat for an hour before baking, then turning it to broil before the pizza goes in; using two types of cheese and crushed canned tomatoes; and finishing each out-of-the-oven pie with black pepper, sea salt, and red pepper flakes. It's intensified the way I feel about pizza, and it's quieted my affections for my favorite Minneapolis joints. Why go to Lola, Black Sheep, or Pizza Nea when I have in my possession the secrets to the smashingest pizza yet? It's a powerful feeling.

The food was incredible. And while the process was long, the final result was so simple: a few people around a table, eating blistered, misshapen pizza and drinking champagne. By cake time we were warm and rosy-cheeked from the food and the heat emanating from the kitchen. But as it goes with birthdays, the cake is cut and a slice is had by all, room or no room.

Okay, that may not be how it goes for all birthdays. But for a baker's birthday, surely.

A Mini Mission

I hate to rob my peach tart of the spotlight so soon. Normally it would have enjoyed a good month-long reign before a new post took its place.

But today is an important day.

Today, Caitlin and I baked and delivered 50 mini cupcakes for an engagement party her co-worker is hosting. It was a modest and relatively stress-free undertaking, but its significance was not lost on us. We brought back the winners of the chocolate v. chocolate showdown from a few weeks back, and we made carrot cupcakes as well.

This was the first baking venture that we started, finished, and delivered together, and it was a (very) light warm-up for our wedding gig this October. We're getting ready to take on the Twin Cities baking scene, if for no other reason but the damn shame it would be to deprive you people of the best cupcakes in the world. It's a lame superlative, I know - but I'm not sure how else to put it. I've never had a better chocolate cupcake, not in any established bakery I've been to.

To be fair, maybe a certain amount of quality-sacrifice is inevitable in mass production.

Or maybe we're just better at this. :)

On a not-so-side note, my mom turns 58 today. She couldn't stick around to bake the cakes with us, and it's weird to bake cupcakes for not your mom on your mom's birthday. So Mom, this is the best I can do: imagine the most luscious dark chocolate sponge topped with a perfect button of pillowy bittersweet chocolate...

And a heart on top, 'cause we love you like crazy.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Marshmallow Frosting

Cupcakes. Nine posts into my baking blog and I am only now beginning to talk about cupcakes. Well, let me set the record straight: I think cupcakes are the tops. Maybe I'm just being taken for a ride by the cupcake bandwagon that has been in town for about a year now - have you noticed? they're quite trendy - but I have a difficult time imagining a more charming, compact and downright fun dessert. To unwrap a cupcake is to call it your own, like a packaged gift with a delightful bow.

On that note, we took to my sister Caitlin's kitchen in celebration of her 28th birthday and to inaugurate the baking career of her spanking new KitchenAid, the alpha tool in a baker's kitchen. It stood proud in all its shiny red glory as we baptized it with the first ingredients of butter and sugar. We switched the lever to speed 6 of 10. Welcome.

We sampled one cupcake warm from the oven - moist and chocolatey, though the three tablespoons of brewed coffee didn't seem to make it through the baking process - and saved the rest for the marshmallow frosting. The topping was essentially sugar and egg white, fluffed up to ten times its original volume. I consider this the true debut of the kitchen's newest addition:

Well done. To be honest, I felt a bit lazy during the whole process, revealing my only qualm with a mixer that can take on virtually any task. I enjoy the action of stirring and whipping and kneading; it's a huge part of why I love to bake. One thing a KitchenAid absolutely cannot do? Frost and decorate. And thank goodness for that.

Happy Birthday to a wonderful sister : )