Sour Cream-Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Alas, I'm so ashamed of myself. I made a HUGE mistake on this cake. It was already bad enough that I couldn't get the pink to turn out magenta (I was afraid my buttercream would turn into a soup-like consistency). But after - AFTER - I had iced the cake (and we're not talking a crumb coat here) I realized that I had forgotten to add the vanilla. So I can't even say that this cake has vanilla buttercream.

I want to run and hide.



Not to mention that I'm really hating the digital camera. I need to upgrade to something that actually takes decent pictures of food.

ugh...I'm just regretting this cake! Fortunately the cake part of this...thing does happen to be totally and completely delicious. It's extremely moist, wonderfully chocolately, and very light. As husband would put it, "nom nom nom!" But I do need to provide a crumbly cake warning. These cakes were very delicate. When I was wrapping them so I could firm them up in the fridge, I thought they were going to split in two. Overall, I wouldn't recommend making this cake any bigger than what the recipe specifies, I would go with something sturdier if you're going to make a sheet cake. But then again, it's so good I wouldn't blame anybody for trying.



And yes, can you believe that this buttered chocolate cake is for someone's birthday? In my defense, it was a last minute request, so I just got a little flustered and hurried.... Okay, excuses are lame. I'm never going to let myself live this down.

Sour Cream-Chocolate Cake
This recipe is the chocolate cake part of Sour Cream-Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting and Chocolate-Peanut Butter Glaze from "Sky High: Irresistable Triple-Layer Cakes"

Makes an 8-inch triple-layer cake, but I stuffed it into two 8-inch cake pans and baked it until it was done (maybe 40 to 45 minutes)

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably Dutch process
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup neutral vegetable oil, such as canola, soybean or vegetable blend
1 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups water
2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter the bottoms and side of three 8-inch round cakepans. Line the bottom of each pan with a round of parchment or waxed paper and butter the paper. I recommend the parchment paper simply because I've never had a good experience with waxed paper in the oven...or maybe I'm just doing something wrong.

2) Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl. Whisk to combine them well. Add the oil and sour cream and whisk to blend. Gradually beat in the water. Blend in the vinegar and vanilla. Whisk in the eggs and beat until well blended. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and be sure the batter is well mixed. Divide among the prepared cake pans.

3) Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a cake tester or wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out almost clean. Let cool the cakes in thier pans for about 20 minutes. Invert onto wire racks, carefully peel off the paper liners, and let cool completely.

For the Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream, you can find the recipe and the method on this posting:
here.

Icing with no vanilla...I'm gong to put this down on my Lessons Learned list.

Banana Cake topped with Chocolate and Caramel Part I

Well, here's the first project since I've started this blog. I'm very excited to share the details. This cake will be a banana cake with chocolate ganache filling and caramel Swiss meringue buttercream. Sorry, the title of this post is sort of deceiving. I need to come up with a better name for this cake.

Today I did some prep work for the final decoration of this cake. The cakes themselves are currently in the freezer - double wrapped and shoved into plastic ziplic bags. I made them about two weeks ago. I've provided the recipe at the end of this post.



My plans for this cake include a yellow cake board, off white, yellow, and golden yellow vertical strips coming down the side of the cake with yellow and golden yellow flowers around the top. It's going to be very cute.

To make the yellow cake board, I took some Wilton Fondant (because it's cheap and even though it's icky tasting, nobody will be eating the fondant on the cake board) and colored it yellow. Then I rolled it out to something a little bit thinner than a quarter of an inch. Next, I took my cake board and covered the edge of the board with piping gel (to help the fondant stick). The rest is easy: place board on fondant, fold fondant over the edge, then use an icing spatula (or a butter knife) and cut the excess off. I recommend doing this at least a day in advance of decorating your cake because you'll want to give the board enough time to dry.



To make the flowers, just roll a bit of fondant out really thin, maybe around 1/8 or 1/16. After cutting out the flowers, I placed it on a thin flower mat and used a candy maker with a ball on the end and thinned out the edges. Moving it over to a thicker sponge, I pressed the center to give it shape and then moved it to a flower former. You could use anything: a paper towel roll cut in half, or an old egg carton. I just happen to have some gadget made specifically for the purpose of giving flowers a curved shape.


Banana Cake
adapted from Paula Deen's 1-2-3-4 cake recipe

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup milk
2 cups sugar
3 cups self-rising flour*
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups very ripe bananas, smashed

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour cake pans.

2) Using a mixer, cream butter until fluffy. Add sugar and continue to cream for 6 - 8 minutes.

3) Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.

4) Add flour and milk alternately to creamed mixture, begin and end with flour.

5) Add vanilla, cinnamon, and bananas and beat until just mixed.

6) Divide evenly among cake pans. Make sure it is level by picking up the pans 2 - 3 inches above the counter and then dropping.

7) Bake 25 - 30 minutes until tester comes out clean.

*If you don't have or don't want to buy self-rising flour, then add to each cup of flour 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt.