This cake is ridiculously processed compared to the recipes I tend to favor, but the sound of it was too good to pass up. I'm glad I bent my rules a little for this one because it is so decadent it ought to have a poetry reading at a salon. I just checked and this is my first use of the word decadent, soon you will understand why.
Another experience in being a guy who is getting the hang of baking in this week's installment. Did you know that a Bundt cake pan is the same thing as a fluted cake pan? That makes one of us; definitely not this poor dimwitted chef who spent far too long scrutinizing every pan at Wal-Mart before fighting off my most base perfectionist desires and just grabbing the damn pan that looked pretty close to what I was looking for. Turns out it was exactly what I was looking for, but now nobody else has to suffer as I have suffered. Until they try to flour the pan. See the first recipe entry for details on flouring if you want the refresher course, but let me tell you that flouring a fluted cake pan is a hell of an exercise.
Back to the ingredients. You're in trouble with food sensitivities right out of the gate on this one. Betty Crocker doesn't give a rat's ass if you can't handle your gluten; that xanthan gum is a potential landmine for some people. It is way down on the ingredients list and it didn't hurt my wife either of the two times she had it, but you are warned.
Otherwise the list is fine - I chose Kahlua for the coffee liqueur and it was perfect. Your sampler bottle is going to give you enough booze for roughly 1.8 of these cakes, luckily I had some extra mini-bottles around to top up the second attempt.
That brings me to another interesting point; I made this cake twice on two subsequent weekends but both times it was different and I think that both versions had their merits. I made the first cake with mint chocolate chips, as I read that the mint really set it off. Now, the alteration suggested using a package of crushed Andes mints, which I can't get in Canada. I replaced them with mint Chipits and I have a hunch that these were a bit stronger than the Andes would have been (you can really taste the pack llama and Sherpa!). If you don't mind a strong taste of mint I think the cake works really well as a chocolate mint cake, but it is going to overwhelm a little.
The second cake was straight semi-sweet chocolate chips and it was amazing. That is all. Look, it's all chocolate, you can't really mess that up, I'm just saying that I liked the mint as well. Oh, you don't need to ice this beauty in any way, shape, or form, it's already rich enough without. That being said? I totally did that. I defrosted the leftover icing from the Skor bar squares and put it to good use. Sure you don't need to ice it, but you should WANT to.
One thing these photos do not properly convey is the sheer heft of the cake. The batter is very thick and the cake comes out very heavy. It's surprisingly moist and delicious, so clearly the additional weight is from the caloric content.
No comments:
Post a Comment