Chocolate Cake 101

Chocolicious.
I'm posting this mainly as a step-by-step of my first successful assembly of a three-layer cake. You can use any cake or frosting that you want, but I'll include the links to what I used at the end of this post.

Cool cakes completely before frosting, or refrigerate/freeze the cakes to make them firmer and easier to handle. Remember to save the flattest, most even cake for the top. I cooled all my cakes upside down and found that it really helped flatten out that dome they have when they first come out of the oven. However, cakes from different recipes will rise differently so you might have to trim the dome off the top. It occured to me that you could add bulk to the frosting and height to the cake by adding cake crumbles (from the domes, if you need to trim them) or chopped nuts.

I'm still trying to get a handle on how many cups of frosting correspond to what sized cakes, but of course, it depends on how thick you want the filling layers to be. I didn't want too much, so about 2/3 of a cup (or one heaping spatula full) for each layer was plenty. I think it was about a quarter inch thick. I used a small knife to spread the frosting all the way to the edge of each layer. It's easier to spread frosting with a small implement, as opposed to a large plastic spatula. The cakes are now stacked and ready to receive a crumb coat.

To create a crumb coat, spread a thin layer of frosting all over the cake. This layer will seal in any loose crumbs so they don't come loose when you're putting on the final layer of frosting.The crumb coat is vital because it seals in all the rough edges of your cake and catches any little crummies that might otherwise get caught in your final coat of frosting. It's possible to frost a cake without taking this step (especially if you baked a fairly dense cake or froze your layers), but it's very easy to snag a delicate cake with dense frosting. As your knife runs over the side or top of a cake, a huge chunk is likely to come off and get caught in the sticky frosting.

The crumb coat can also be used to create a straight edge--note how I filled in the jagged sides with frosting so the cake looks much sharper than it did in the previous photo. Kitchen mess be darned, I blew away the crumbs as I crumb coated. A good crumb coat would be a little thicker than this, but I was running out of my filling/crumb frosting so I had to make do.

Put the cake in the fridge to set the crumb coating. To apply the final frosting, put a huge dollop (at least a cup) of frosting on top of the cake. Smooth towards the edges. Then, taking a knifeful of frosting at a time. start frosting the sides. This way I could control the thickness of the frosting. Last time, I ended up with frosting that was really thick on one side, really thin on another, and sort of medium on top. I managed to get a very even cake this time. To use up the rest of my small stash of chocolate bits, I covered the cake in grated chocolate. I think it would have been much prettier if I'd had dark chocolate, but milk chocolate was all I had. I was really trying to use up as much stuff that was already in my kitchen as possible. The recipes weren't chosen for any other reason that they could help me clean out my kitchen. It turned out well, but you'll want to find a good recipe off epicurious.com or some other reputable website if you're going to go out and shop for ingredients.

I used three 8" cakes because anything bigger is just ridiculous for someone who's not feeding an army of twenty. I wish I had 7" cake pans. My 5" is a bit too tiny and precious, but 7" would be really cute because I think small tall cakes are prettier than big short cakes.

Ghiradelli Empress Cake: I like this a lot. It makes a smooth fluffy batter, and light cakes that are still easy to handle. I would, however, prefer a cake that uses butter instead of shortening. For three layers, I had to one-and-a-half this recipe.

Creamy Chocolate Frosting: this was the filling and crumb coat, using leftover bits of Scharffen Berger 99% cocoa unsweetened chocolate and Bonnat 70% (a French chocolate), Plugra butter, and half and half instead of milk. I also added two tablespoons of Grand Marnier, but it wasn't a very pronounced flavor.

After-tasting edit: the cake is great. I'm torn: the shortening gives it a nice texture, but butter would taste so much better. As for the frosting, it's great warm but a little chalky when cold. I personally would prefer a gooey chocolate ganache, but who keeps a pound of dark chocolate and a pink of cream around at all times? (Okay, I know--me. I slacked). I was also shocked that the layers were incredibly thin even though I thought I'd put plenty of frosting on the cake. To fill and frost this cake, you'll probably need five or even six cups of frosting. I had four.