Cake #007: Mexican Chocolate Cake

This cake was based on a request from redsouffle. I made it for my second Zombie Movie Night, and it worked out pretty well.

The base was the standard chocolate cake from CIBR, same as Cake #004. I was deliberating between this and the Devil's Food Cake. It's a good thing I've been making notes. I added 2tsp cinnamon and 3/4 tsp 50K cayenne (from Market Spice) to the basic recipe. This added a very subtle kick, mostly as an aftertaste, to the cake. I liked it, but sort of wish it had been a bit stronger. I'm not sure if adding more cayenne or upping it to 100k would be better. Probably next time I will try upping the amount, maybe to 1sp or 5/4 tsp. I don't want the cayenne to overpower, though.

The filling (which you can't really see in the pic) was a strawberry filling. Same sort of frozen fruit cooked on the stove with corn starch concoction that I usually make. I added a bit of blackberry brandy this time to try to add a bit of extra flavor. I'm not sure it really worked. At least, I didn't really taste any difference. Maybe if I'd a) added a few blackberries or b) used more brandy. I didn't want to use more brandy at the time since it was already pretty watery. I used wendolen 's suggestion of stirring the corn starch in water before pouring it in, which worked but I used much more water than I would have liked. The end result was about right, though.

I was originally going to use a blackberry filling, but it turned out I didn't actually have blackberries. Strawberry worked, though.

The frosting came out of CIBR as well, a plain chocolate frosting. It was essentially cream and semi-sweet chocolate. However, as written in the book the frosting will harden into quite a hard shell if you wait too long, which I didn't realize. When I went to put it on the cake. it was a solid mass of chocolate. I simmered an extra half pint of cream and added it to the chocolate (which melted the chocolate back down better than I would have guessed) and let it cool down to a thicker consistency once again.

If I use this frosting again, I will either a) increase the cream, b) watch the timing of the frosting and spread it while it's still spreadable (based on inaurolillium 's suggestion) or c) a combination of both. There's some appeal to the idea of a hard chocolate shell on the cake, actually. If I do that, I'll have to make the frosting last to make sure the timing works out.



It worked pretty well. I was pleased with it. And I'm getting reasonably good at the basic chocolate layer cake.

(though I haven't posted as much, I've been using the same recipe for cupcakes. Yummy, yummy cupcakes.)