Happy Black Magic Cake Day

Now, I’m no baker. Usually, I HATE baking and will never volunteer to bake anything unless is to impress a boy or to make biscuits (homemade biscuits will always have a special place in my heart- thanks, Mom [and Betty Crocker]).

Recently, for some strange reason, I had an urge to bake a chocolate cake. I’ve had a rocky history with cake baking- when I was thirteen I decided to bake a chocolate cake from scratch, and misread the ingredients. After adding what was probably 1/4 or 1/3 cups each of baking soda and baking powder, the cake was literally rising up and out of the pan, on it’s way to growing out of the oven. The cake I attempted to bake was the Perfectly Chocolate Cake from my mom's brand new Hershey’s cookbook. After that mess, however, my baking adventures were limited to whatever came out of a box.

So naturally, when I got that urge to bake a cake last weekend, I went back to the Hershey’s repertoire and decided on the Black Magic Cake. It has cocoa and buttermilk and mmmm I knew that would make for a delicious cake. And it did! But, doh… for some stupid reason I neglected to flour my greased baking pans and the cake turned out like this:

Lesson learned! Always flour your greased pans when baking. I knew this. But I obviously had a brain spasm that afternoon. I did happen to salvage the 2^nd cake, so I whipped up a tasty semi-sweet chocolate ganache (semi-sweet chocolate chips, earth balance, vanilla almond milk, cocoa powder, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and a dash of vanilla) to frost it. I brought Jed a piece of the beautiful end result to work that night… It was Valentine’s Day, after all.

Here’s the recipe for the cake:

Ingredients

• 2 cups sugar
• 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk or sour milk* (we used buttermilk)
• 1 cup strong black coffee OR 2 teaspoons powdered instant coffee plus 1 cup boiling water (we used strong black coffee)
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans or one 13x9x2-inch baking pan.

2. Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, buttermilk, coffee, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes (Batter will be thin). Pour batter evenly into prepared pans.

3. Bake 30 to 35 minutes for round pans, 35 to 40 minutes for rectangular pan or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely. Frost as desired. Yields 10 to 12 servings.

• To make sour milk: Use 1 tablespoon white vinegar plus milk to equal 1 cup.

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

What do you do when you just start dating a boy and he ends up having a birthday? You bake him these crazy ambitious cupcakes, bring them to his birthday dinner, and wow both him and his friends. Or at least, that’s what I did for Jed’s birthday this past September. Like I said before, this recipe was quite ambitious. I hadn’t baked cupcakes in years, and had probably never made a butter cream frosting. But, I followed the directions exactly (over a few days- first I baked the cupcakes, did the ganache filling one day, and the butter cream frosting the day we ate them) and these chocolate-Guinness cupcakes with Jameson chocolate ganache and Bailey’s Irish Cream butter cream came out really, really, really awesome.

Borrowed from SmittenKitchen.com, here’s the recipe:

Makes 20 to 24 cupcakes

For the Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes

1 cup stout (such as Guinness)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Hershey's)
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup sour cream

Ganache Filling
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2/3 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1 to 2 teaspoons Irish whiskey

Baileys Frosting (see Recipe Notes)
3 to 4 cups confections sugar
1 stick (1/2 cup or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperatue
3 to 4 tablespoons Baileys (or milk, or heavy cream, or a combination thereof)

Special equipment: 1-inch round cookie cutter or an apple corer (I used a knife) and a piping bag (though a plastic bag with the corner snipped off will also work)

Make the cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 24 cupcake cups with liners. Bring 1 cup stout and 1 cup butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt in large bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend. Add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add flour mixture and beat briefly on slow speed. Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined. Divide batter among cupcake liners, filling them 2/3 to 3/4 of the way. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, rotating them once front to back if your oven bakes unevenly, about 17 minutes. Cool cupcakes on a rack completely.

Make the filling: Chop the chocolate and transfer it to a heatproof bowl. Heat the cream until simmering and pour it over the chocolate. Let it sit for one minute and then stir until smooth. (If this has not sufficiently melted the chocolate, you can return it to a double-boiler to gently melt what remains. 20 seconds in the microwave, watching carefully, will also work.) Add the butter and whiskey (if you’re using it) and stir until combined.

Fill the cupcakes: Let the ganache cool until thick but still soft enough to be piped (the fridge will speed this along but you must stir it every 10 minutes). Meanwhile, using your 1-inch round cookie cutter or an apple corer, cut the centers out of the cooled cupcakes. You want to go most of the way down the cupcake but not cut through the bottom — aim for 2/3 of the way. A slim spoon or grapefruit knife will help you get the center out. Those are your “tasters”. Put the ganache into a piping bag with a wide tip and fill the holes in each cupcake to the top.

Make the frosting: Whip the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, for several minutes. You want to get it very light and fluffy. Slowly add the powdered sugar, a few tablespoons at a time.

[This is a fantastic trick I picked up while working on the cupcakes article for Martha Stewart Living; the test kitchen chefs had found that when they added the sugar slowly, quick buttercream frostings got less grainy, and tended to require less sugar to thicken them up.]

When the frosting looks thick enough to spread, drizzle in the Baileys (or milk) and whip it until combined. If this has made the frosting too thin (it shouldn’t, but just in case) beat in another spoonful or two of powdered sugar.

Ice and decorate the cupcakes.

Do ahead: You can bake the cupcakes a week or two in advance and store them, well wrapped, in the freezer. You can also fill them before you freeze them. They also keep filled — or filled and frosted — in the fridge for a day. (Longer, they will start to get stale.)