Chocolate Cake with Coconut

So my friend Kerri, who I made the Burnt Sugar Cake for at the beginning of summer, wanted a chocolatey-coconuty cake before I left for school. So this was a little while ago. But I love coconut too, and since it wasn't just a chocolate cake, I decided to see my friends one last time before leaving across the country again by making a cake and inviting them over.

The cake batter for this recipe was so, so, SO easy, especially since it was all made in one bowl. It took about five minutes longer than the recipe required to bake in the oven, but it turned out DELICIOUS. And to think, I'd almost used the chocolate cake recipe that I made for Steven's cake because I knew that one was good. Now I can't decide which one was better. This one is a Hershey's recipe and is so moist and goes perfectly with the light meringue frosting and the almond ganache filling. I want to make this cake again, just as it is, no other mixing and matching, right away!

I got this combination of recipes from 2 Stews. To grind my almonds I used a mortar and pestle, and I didn't have 8 ounces of bittersweet chocolate on me for the ganache, so I used 2 oz bittersweet, 6 oz semisweet, and a bit of cocoa powder.

Chocolate Cake
Adapted by 2 Stews from Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake

2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease, flour and line with parchment a 9 inch cake pan or line a muffin tin with cupcake baking cups.

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla; beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour into lined muffin tin. Bake 30-35 minutes for cake and 20-25 minutes for cupcakes or until wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

Makes 30 cupcakes or 2-9 inch layer cakes.





Chocolate Almond Ganache
Recipe from 2 Stews

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup ground almonds
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Break up the chocolate into a medium bowl. Heat the cream until just boiling and pour over the chocolate. Let it sit until the chocolate is melted. Stir to combine evenly and stir in the vanilla and almond extract. Let sit at room temperature until thick and creamy, but not too firm to spread.

Makes about 2 cups.







Meringue Frosting With Coconut
Recipe from 2 Stews

2 cups sugar
2/3 cups water
6 egg whites
pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
About 1-1 1/2 cups shredded coconut for the top and sides

Combine the sugar and water in a heavy medium saucepan and bring to a boil without stirring. Boil until it reaches the soft ball stage, 240 degrees on a candy thermometer.

While the syrup is cooking, beat the egg whites with the salt and cream of tartar until stiff peaks form. When the syrup reaches 240 degrees, pour 1/4 cup of the syrup into the stiffly beaten egg whites, drop by drop, beating at high speed. Gradually add the rest of the syrup in a fine stream and beat for 8 to 12 minutes, or until the mixture is cool. Beat in vanilla extract. The mixture should be glossy and thick, but not dry.

Makes about 6 cups.





Assembly

Place one layer of the cake on a serving platter. Spread an even layer of the ganache on top. Place the second layer on and frost with the meringue frosting. Sprinkle the shredded coconut on top and lightly pat on the sides.

Vanilla Yogurt Cake with Orange Glaze

I've been dying to make this recipe for so long, and finally got the opportunity for my mom's bookgroup retreat (which was actually a long time ago). I was also dying to try this, but unfortunately, the dog ate the rest that my mom brought home. Oh boy.

I altered the recipe from making two mini-loaves, to making one big loaf. I also made a mistake and added two extra tablespoons of orange juice to the batter instead of putting over the fresh-from-the-oven loaf, but apparently it was delicious, so maybe I'd do that again if I were to make this again (which I probably will, since I still really want to try it). For the original recipe, you can click the link.

Vanilla Yogurt Cake with Orange Glaze
Recipe adapted from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody

1 2/3 cups all purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 cup granulated sugar
1 vanilla bean, seed scraped out, pod discarded
1 ½ TBSP vanilla extract
7 oz Greek Yogurt
½ cup vegetable oil
4 TBSP orange juice, divided

Spray an 8x4 loaf pan with baking spray. Or coat with butter and flour.

Preheat oven to 350F.

Using a stand mixer (or a large bowl and and electric hand mixer), beat together the egg, egg yolk, and sugar on medium-high speed, until it turns pale yellow, about 3 minutes. Add the vanilla beans, vanilla extract, and oil, beat another minute, until fully incorporated.

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

With the mixer on low speed, add half the amount of dry ingredients. Then add half the amount of Greek yogurt, and 2 TBSP of the orange juice. Add remaining dry ingredients and followed by the remaining yogurt and the rest of the orange juice. Remove from mixer and finish mixing by hand using a spatula until all of the ingredients are fully incorporated.

Pour into prepared pan til it's 2/3 the way full and bake for 1 hr to 1:05 hrs.

Remove from oven. Using a toothpick or large wooden skewer poke holes into the cake.

Let cool for 5 minutes and remove from pan. Place on wire rack to finish cooling. When cool, glaze cakes.

Orange Glaze

1 cups sifted powdered sugar
3 TBSP orange juice

Combine the two ingredients together with a whisk. Pour over cake.

Leftover Frosting Sandwiches

While I was making the three-layer, chocolate frosting version of Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake recipe, I ended up having a lot more extra frosting than I'd have liked. Luckily for me, my mom's friend Darcee was visiting and suggested I put the extra frosting between two graham crackers and refridgerate or freeze them, kind of like frosting sandwiches--well, exactly like them.

Anyway, I decided it was a good idea and tried it out.

Oh my god, using this recipe for frosting made them taste exactly like ice cream sandwiches. I frequently end up with too much frosting, so this is a great idea so as not to waste it!

Lemon Cake with Chocolate Buttercream

So my mom had her bookgroup retreat, and she asked me to make a cake. She loved the lemon cake from Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake from her book Baking: From My Home to Yours, and wanted something like that for dessert at her retreat. The book she and her friends read for the retreat, to boot, was The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (which, by the way, is a pretty good read). So of course I wanted to try and make a cake that looked like the cake on the cover! It was a three layer yellow lemon cake with what looked like milk chocolate buttercream. I ended up making mine a little different, but it still suited the occasion.

I used Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake recipe for the lemon cake, but instead of cutting two layers in half, I wanted a three layer cake, so I split the batter into three pans and baked them for about 25 minutes.

For the frosting, I used Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake lemon buttercream recipe and substituted a fourth a cup of unsweetened cocoa powder for the fourth a cup of lemon juice. I was surprised that it turned out so well: it tasted like chocolate meringue frosting, not chocolate buttercream, and was a good match for the light crumb of the cake.

I took a bit of dark chocolate and made chocolate shavings to put on the sides to make the cake look a little nicer. So my recipe for decorating the cake was to frost between the layers and all over, then press the shavings into the side: perfectly easy and perfectly delicious.