Sour Cream Chocolate Cake
Two cakes ago, I made the worst cake of my life. I attempted to adapt a favorite recipe to fit the idea of "rhubarb marble cake with PINK rhubarb frosting. I painstakingly reduced rhubarb into a delicious rhubarb compote, strained it and then lost it to this cake from hell. Not only did it look absolutely hideous due to simple mistakes with the frosting, it tasted absolutely hideous with a flavor that can truly only be described as “pink”. I almost cried as I looked at the pastel frosting, painfully etched across the jammy cake. It leaned at a more impressive angle than the famous tower of Pisa. I thought I was making the most instagramable cake of 2018, I thought maybe this was my big moment at adapting a cake recipe.
In my redemption, I made a birthday cake for my friend Michaela's lovely mom, Teresa. For her birthday we went up to the island where she lives to make her a feast of paella and chocolate cake. We planned a sour cream chocolate cake for the occasion that would be topped with fresh flowers. I wanted it to look pretty. Fine detail isn't my strong suit as I have shaky hands and a serious lack of patience. I've somewhat purposefully taken the stance that if a cake or pie is beautifully and ornately decorated it must surely taste like trash. That being said, I try to make my cakes attractive in their own right. Fresh flowers and greenery, seasonal fruit, or even a nice, simple swoosh of frosting can really make the difference. The cake would hopefully be delicious, as sour cream tends to have this impact on all foods, but I couldn't help but imagine how beautiful it would be. I had a vision of party goers praising my handiwork, "Oh what a cake!" they would say, and I would take all the credit as if I, myself, had designed the roses that topped it.
Before getting down to cake/paella business, we went out for a big shop to gather ingredients and enjoy a bit of the small town life. Aside from balking at the price of saffron (for the paella of course), we spent the first half of the day being toted around by Teresa. We went shopping at our favorite thrift store "Good Cheer" as well as its sister store, "Good Cheer 2" (a ten minute drive from the former), and eating at "Pickles" - the fittingly named deli which features a very disturbing wood carving (a Washington state specialty) of a voluptuous lady riding on an enormous pickle.
Teresa lives in a hippie-esque community which includes a shared garden, several chickens, and two ducks whom I named "Martin" and "Geneva" despite everyone else's lack of enthusiasm or official acknowledgment. Back at the house we ran into sweet six year old neighbor, Emile, who expressed a passionate interest in our cake and couldn't, for the life of him, remember my name. He helped us pick strawberries and edible flowers for cake decoration proclaiming all the while "And I know just how I want to decorate it."
Michaela went to oversee all things paella and I, flanked by my young assistant, attended to the cake. "Emile!" I called with false cheer, thinking remorsefully of the leaning pink disaster, "how about you take this nice plate and decorate it with all the flowers you want, just the way you want to!" He saw through my feeble attempts to ditch him. "And then I'll decorate the cake?" He asked. "Well no, then you'll be needed to help with the paella! Isn't that exciting?" I was pleading now. "Umm no," he said sweetly, "I'd rather make the cake with you, and I know exactly how I'm going to decorate it". And so I had to accept my loss and carry on with the cake. After arguing for several minutes that no, we cannot put lavender sticking straight up out of the cake, we came to several agreements and made the most beautiful and floral cake either of us had ever seen.
This recipe has been adapted, loosely, from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess. The recipe calls for cocoa powder and employs an untraditional method of combining dry ingredients with butter and then adding in the wet ingredients. I had no cocoa powder so I reconfigured the recipe to work with chocolate. I instead put the ingredients through a more traditional technique; creaming the butter and sugar first, followed by chocolate, then eggs, then dry ingredients alternating with wet ingredients. I don’t bother creaming the butter and sugar till light and fluffy, just till creamy and smooth; this is a dense and moist cake. I’ve tweaked it in other places as well; increasing the salt, vanilla, and sour cream. Most noticeably, I replaced a mixture of dark and milk chocolate in the frosting with six ounces of unsweetened bakers chocolate, making my frosting significantly darker than Nigella’s original recipe as well as far less sweet, which I am always partial to.
Sour Cream Chocolate Cake
For the cake:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 cup sour cream
Sour Cream Chocolate frosting (follows below)
Method:
Preheat your oven to 350 F
Butter and flour two round 9 inch cake pans. (Feel free to use cocoa instead of flour)
Melt chocolate on a double boiler or in the microwave. Set aside to cool.
Whisk together flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in a bowl until well combined.
Cream butter and sugar together using a standing mixer or bowl and electric hand mixer. Beat on high until smooth and creamy.
Add vanilla and eggs, one at a time, beating well between each addition.
Add chocolate, beat until thoroughly combined.
Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients. Mix on low until just combined. Add 1/2 cup of sour cream and beat again on low until just combined. Repeat with another 1/3 of the dry ingredients and the remaining 1/2 cup of sour cream. Finish by adding the last of the dry ingredients and mixing until just combined.
Divide batter evenly between prepared pans.
Bake for 22-25 minutes.
Let cool for 15 minutes in the pan before turning the cakes out onto cooling racks.
Sour Cream Chocolate Frosting
6 oz unsweetened chocolate
8 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup sour cream
2 1/2- 3 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
Method:
Melt chocolate on a double boiler or in the microwave. Let cool for 5-10 minutes.
Cream together butter, sour cream, and vanilla in a standing mixer, or large bowl using an electric hand mixer. Add chocolate and vanilla and combine well.
Add powdered sugar 1/2 cup at a time, mixing well between additions. The frosting should be soft enough to spread but stiff enough to hold its shape.
Frost the cake:
Place a small dollop or frosting in the center of a cake plate or stand. Place one cake layer centered on top of it on the plate.
Spread about 3/4 cup frosting evenly over the cake.
Place second cake on top. Frost the sides and then top, generously with frosting, according to your preference.(You may end up with extra frosting, I had plenty leftover. Use it for something else of freeze it if you like.)
Top with fresh flowers and birthday candles.
