A matter of taste; even more chocolate cake

A sugar-high birthday; taste testing chocolate cakes. In the bottom left photo, the famed Double Layer Chocolate Cake (in cupcake form) sits to the left of Martha Stewart's One Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes.

January 16th marked Benjamin's third birthday, a perfect excuse for round two of the chocolate cake battle raging in my recipe file. Our biggest little man had requested "chocolate with chocolate" to celebrate his day, and what sort of Mummy would I be if I refused?

I forget how it was exactly, but I stumbled upon the recipe for Double Chocolate Layer cake, from Chef Ed Kasky (as published in Gourmet magazine, March 1999). I must have been living under a rock this last decade, because this cake has quite a following, with over 1200 (hyperbole-laden) comments on Epicurious. It has also appeared on countless other sites and discussed in detail.

With all of that fanfare, there was no alternative than to try this cake for myself. It might be a bit of retread of covered territory, but I have never been one to deny my curiosity. I had to know what the fuss was about.

With multiple celebrations ahead of us, I followed my same procedure as before, this time with Martha Stewart's One Bowl Cupcakes, as published in her Baking Handbook (Clarkson Potter, 2005), against the lauded Double Layer Chocolate cake. The major difference between the two recipes is that the former is an all-cocoa preparation, whereas the latter includes both cocoa and melted chocolate. It should be noted, as reported in my earlier test, that I substitute some prepared coffee for the water called for in the Stewart cake.

The batters were equally-easy to come prepre, with the Gourmet recipe notably thinner in its consistency. The Stewart batter was more viscous, and was my preference when I surreptitiously licked some from the bowl while cleaning up.

Half of each batter went into cupcakes, with their liners marked to indicate the recipe used. The remaining batter was combined, weighed, divided and baked into layers for a single, staggeringly-tall four-layer cake. It was one of the tallest cakes I have ever made, taller than it was wide, and inspiring an awed reaction from our birthday boy.

Despite the impressive stature of the cake, the cupcakes were of my real interest. Using the same (by weight) of batter for each cup, the Martha Stewart cupcakes baked up ever-so-slightly taller, with a gentle dome and a bit of a rimmed edge. They were pretty, perfectly-formed and slightly cracked on top, an example of what a cupcake should look like. The Gourmet recipe baked up slightly flatter, but beyond that, the texture, colour and overall look of the cupcakes were identical.

So it was down to taste. We tasted the two blindly, cake alone and then with frosting, and it was a unanimous decision.

The Gourmet recipe for Double Chocolate Layer Cake won.

Here's the thing. This cake deserves fanfare. The most fantastic, festive, fanciful fanfare that you can imagine - and more. Deeply flavoured, with a dark and even crumb, the cake is moist and tender but just a bit toothsome. Truthfully, it is similar to the Martha Stewart recipe, boasting just about every quality that had made me declare it the winner over Beatty's Chocolate Cake from Ina Garten last summer. Where the Gourmet cake took an edge was in its subtle fudginess, a bit of (excuse the technical term) squidgy-ness, that made each bite that much more satisfying.

Now I will admit I am tempted to try the One Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes with a bit of melted chocolate stirred in, just to see how it would turn out. But for now, I am more than satisfied to say that the Double Layer Chocolate Cake from Gourmet warrants its fame.

Double Chocolate Layer Cake
From Chef Ed Kasky, as published in Gourmet Magazine, March 1999.

The recipe can be found online here.

Notes:
• Some comments on the Epicurious site report that they have had trouble with the Double-Chocolate Layer Cake overflowing their standard 10" pans. The recipe specifically requires 2" deep pans, which may remedy this problem. I can only comment on the taste of the cake, as I baked mine in four 8" round cake pans, with the remainder used for cupcakes, as pictured.

One Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes
From Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook.

The Martha Stewart Recipe from the Baking Handbook is not the same as the One Bowl Cupcakes recipe that has been published on her site online, nor is it the one that was published in Martha Stewart Living for February 2009. The recipe is subject to copyright; however, a quick search does find it published online (you are looking for the recipe that begins with flour as the first ingredient).

Tales from the breadbox, chapter two

Honey-hued and tender, Soft American-style Sandwich Bread, from the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

Here I go. Again.

It started with chocolate cake, then it was peanut butter cookies. Now, it's sandwich bread.

You see, I'm not one to leave well enough alone. I have fidgety digits, hands that almost twitch at the prospect of fiddling with an idea. An idea will capture my attention, and I find it nearly impossible to let go; even if I attempt to shove it aside to deal with the matter at hand, the idea it will remain, incessantly tugging at the edge of my attention.

Lest I begin a nervous tick, or start yelling at my own brain, I invariably give in to my impulses.

After asking for direction on soft sandwich bread recipes to try, I was offered a myriad of helpful suggestions. Wonderful help, and to be sure there was no way I was going to let the guidance go to waste. So I began baking, first Julia Child's Classic White Bread from Baking with Julia (William Morrow Cookbooks, 1996), then the Soft American-style Sandwich Bread (pictured above) from the fantastic Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007). Both were delicious, each in their own way (more on that in a moment).

What these breads solidified for me was my criticism of Ina Garten's Honey White Bread; too sweet and too eggy. I simply do not like eggs in my sandwich loaves. I like eggs in some breads, Egg Breads to be specific, but those breads I consider a whole other food entirely.

In my standby everyday sandwich breads, I want something milder, subtle but with flavour, appropriate for both savoury and sweet uses and without too much richness. Egged breads have their own place, but in my mind that place is not alongside tuna fish at lunchtime. Your mileage may vary.

Back to the recipes I did like. The Soft American-style Sandwich Bread from Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, authors of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. With a more modest amount of yeast than some other recipes I have seen, and a longer resting time, this bread had a remarkably deep flavour. The inclusion of melted butter resulted in a crumb that was substantial yet light, yielding but still hearty enough to be sliced cleanly and well-suited as the base for even Dagwood-esque creations. The recipe yields three loaves, I sent some dough home with an especially-cherished friend, and she found it exactly the sort of bread she likes.

My heart, however, was not wholly won over. The aforementioned butter was delicious, but almost too much of a good thing (perish the thought). While I have never been one to shy away from full fat in all its glory, the quantity of fat was again a distraction. It became about the butter, and not about the bread as a whole.

The other strike against this loaf was that I'd made Julia Child's Classic White Bread earlier in the week and I was already rather smitten. I should have known America's grand-dame of gastronomy would have the (almost) perfect recipe. The dough was gorgeous to work with, laminated with less softened butter than the Soft American-style, and sublimely silky. The loaves rose to impressive heights when baked, cresting well over the edge of the pan and sporting a burnished-gold tan. Their texture was spot-on; soft and tender, and slightly springy to the tongue. Most probably attributed to the thorough kneading the dough requires, it was this texture that made this loaf truly exceptional.

But even as I was deeply mired in a blissful state of carbohydrate-induced languor, I had a nagging impulse. An annoying little idea of how I could take this great recipe and (possibly, hopefully) make it better.

After years of eating breads with minimal leaveners and slow rises, I have come to prefer their flavour to that of quicker-risen loaves. Even in my flour-dusted stupor of bready goodness, I could not get past the fact that I could taste the yeast in Child's bread. As such, while I favoued the overall results from her recipe, I still found the longer-rested breads from Hertzberg and Francois, and Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duigud (HomeBaking, Random House Canada, 2003) appealing. Simply put, they had an understated complexity that is lacking in heavily-yeasted breads.

So what to do? Well, although I am no expert on the matter, I am going to attempt an experiment. I am going to combine the elements of all three recipes, to see if I can manage to capture the best traits of each. Possibly this will end in utter disaster, possibly in delicious bread. I'll be sure to share the results.

Oh, and did I mention that I have found the excuse to bake two chocolate cakes for Benjamin's upcoming birthday, just so I can try out another side-by-side comparison?

Neurotic behaviour? Yes. Delicious dividends? Oh yes, very. So how can I complain about that?

Happy baking.

A cocoa'd clash of the titans

Shown here surrounded by toys at a family picnic, Martha Stewart's One Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes and Beatty's Chocolate Cake from Ina Garten were combined in a multi-layer cake. Photos courtesy Deep Media.

As anyone familiar with the recipes and columns featured on this site might assume, I am pretty much my family's unofficial baker. One could also rightly assume, seeing my penchant for chocolate, that this fondness might run in the family.

And so, with birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, family reunions and all other manner of festive events, I bake a lot. Not that I am complaining; far be it in fact.

Sometimes there is nothing I would rather do than to pull out my beloved mixer and spend the afternoon measuring, beating and baking. Nowadays I am most often aided by the efforts of my rather endearing assistant, who particularly enjoys sifting dry ingredients and feels it his birthright to lick the bowl whenever possible.

But I digress. Back to the chocolate. Since this love for all things to do with the cacao bean seems to be part of our familial DNA, chocolate cakes are often the request for our celebratory events. Every time I am asked, these words activate my June Cleaver gene; I become consumed with the desire to make the most delicious, most gorgeous, most towering creation of irresistible, indulgent cake and decadent frosting imaginable.

A few years ago I started making the One Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook to satisfy this task. They were met with resounding accolades as everyone proclaimed them to be the "best ever." I made these for picnics, frosted with chocolate buttercream and decorated with accents of Martha Stewart's signature jadeite green. Truly a one-bowl wonder, I made them in a layer cake variation for a joint birthday party and was later told tales of attendees fighting over the last slice.

Then along came Beatty. I never met her, but was introduced to her legacy by Ina Garten on the show The Barefoot Contessa. It seems that this wonderful woman, the grandmother of Ina's friend Michael the florist, made a fantastic chocolate cake. Like Martha's, hers came together with a single bowl and beater and was advertised as delicious. Who was I to argue with Ina? So the next family event rolled around, and out rolled Beatty's cake. Now this recipe was deemed supreme, and all others were said to pale in comparison.

"What about Martha's?" I asked my family.
"This is better." They replied.

The problem was, I know better than to trust my family and friends. See, I know them. They are a fickle, fickle bunch. Easily swayed by the power of chocolate, give them a slice of homemade cake and they will pretty much say whatever you ask them to. They know cake that is in front of you will always be far superior than the cake that has long been eaten.

I had to find out for myself.

It just so happened that recently I was contemplating the task of a cake for an annual family picnic. It was to celebrate a six-year-old's birthday, and when I asked for particulars I was told "chocolate, no nuts." Armed with this instruction, I decided that purity was the way to go; chocolate upon chocolate. And layers. Lots of layers. What child (or adult for that matter) doesn't catch their breath just a little at the sight of a towering slice of birthday cake?

I was perusing recipes when I realized the opportunity at hand. I could finally settle my chocolate cake conundrum - whose cake was better, Ina's or Martha's? I did the math - one single layer 9"x13" cake (or double layer 9") serves about 16 people. If I took two recipes for cakes that size, I could easily serve my 30.

Then I ran into a problem. If I did one layer of each cake, they may bake up to different textures or colours. That would not work. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I am a stickler for consistent results in baking.

But I did not want to pass up this chance to finally try these cakes side-by-side. I considered my options and came up with an unorthodox plan.

Make each recipe to the letter, or at least to the letter of the notes I have made over the years. Take one 1 1/4" ice cream scoop of each batter and bake until done in a miniature muffin pan. Take the rest of the two batters, combine them, weigh them, then divide them evenly between three 9"x13" pans for baking. I would have two pure testers to compare, and three identical layers for the picnic.

It was just crazy enough to work. And, well, require a heck of a lot of dirty bowls and two nights of staying up well past my bedtime. And yes, I am fully aware of my obsessiveness.

But it was so worth it. Battle chocolate cake has a winner - Martha*.

I wish I had taken a photograph of the miniature cupcakes, but it was later than I would like to admit and there was no way I was pulling the camera out at that hour.

Take my word for it, Martha's baked up with a beautiful, glossy-smooth crown and sprang back jauntily to the touch. Ina's was slightly more reticent to recover and flatter on top - a trait helpful in layer cakes, but for a cupcake it looked a little depressed. However, the dark, peat-like colour of each was strikingly similar when compared, as was the crumb. Both cakes boasted a texture that was well-formed, open and moist. If I was pressed to note a difference, Ina's was ever so slightly more moist and delicately-elastic to the tongue.

And now the taste. While Ina's did have a prominent cocoa flavour balanced by a subtle coffee undertone, Martha's was somehow more intense, without being overbearing. I could not put my finger on it, but there was something that gave the latter more character. I am sorry and mean no offense Beatty, but something about your cake (while exceedingly tasty) was a smidge reminiscent of a boxed cake when put up against Martha's. Truly, Ms. Stewart's was that good. It was richer, deeper, chocolateyer. I found it was every -er I could hope for.

I knew it was not a good idea to listen to family members on a chocolate high. Sometimes due diligence, along with a bunch of eggs and a box of cocoa, is the only way.

* Some commenters are surprised at Martha's win. To be frank, I was too; I love Ina's cake. Upon reflection, I wonder if Ina's was a victim to its texture; its light sponginess melts in the mouth, while Martha's edge in structure allows it to linger. In short, you simply have more of an opprtunity to taste the latter. It should be noted though, that I did alter Martha's original recipe (see below), so the victory is subject to a condition.

Epilogue:

For those wondering what the layer cake was like after I combined the two recipes, it was sinfully yummy. The layers baked up exceptionally even, but their size and tenderness did make them a somewhat delicate to handle.

I am fairly sure that the number that ended up at the event was somewhere closer to 50, and the cake served the crowd handily. Everyone came back with glowing reviews. I would almost hazard to say the cake was better than Martha's cupcake, but I am scared to start down that slippery slope. Goodness knows, I can't make a behemoth like this one for every event, now can I? With results like this though, I won't say I'm not tempted.

You will note I have not included the recipe for the frosting, because that research is still ongoing. In this instance, I used a loose adaptation of a few recipes for chocolate buttercream between the layers, covered with an improvised ganache smoothed over top.

One bowl chocolate cupcakes
From Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook (Clarkson Potter, 2005).

As the recipe is subject to copyright, I have only included my notes here. However, a quick search does find it published online (not through the official site, not the one that begins with 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder).

Notes:

• In lieu of milk alone, I use 1/2 cup sour cream plus 3/4 cup milk. Alternatively, I have had success swapping in some buttermilk.
• As many may remember, I am an addict when it comes to espresso and chocolate in combination; so I use about 1/4 teaspoon of espresso powder dissolved in the warm water. If espresso powder is unavailable, I recommend at least 1/2 cup of prepared coffee substituted for the same amount of water (combined with enough warm water to meet the recipe's specification).
• If using kosher salt for baking, I sometimes will stir it into the liquid ingredients instead of sifting it into the dry. This way you ensure that it is fully dissolved.