Cake 15: Macaroon Cake, page 246

  If you love Almond Joy candy bars, then this is the layer cake for you.  This was my first attempt slicing a rectangular sheet cake to make layers, and the final product could have been a little more level, but all who ate agreed: it was scrumptious. 

Day 14 - Tunnel of Fudge

   My mother made this cake, and I remember bringing it to school, a small gift for my formidable 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Bailey.  Whether bribe or treat, it was extremely well-received.  The original, the one Mother made excellently and many times, was a Pillsbury Bake-Off contest winner;  I wonder who created that recipe.  It requires at least one ingredient no longer on the market, but Michelle Urvater's Chocolate Cake has an updated version.  I couldn't resist giving it a try.
   Following the directions as exactly as possible, I hit a couple of snags.  Michelle tells us to prepare the pudding according to directions on the box, but she also says to use 1 1/2 cups of milk and not the 2 cups on the box.  If you do use 2 cups of milk, it's trouble.  You have more pudding than can fit.  You don't want pudding touching the sides of the pan, ruining the tunnel effect and making strata of fudge instead; with pudding overload this can happen.  SO stick with the book directions, a little less milk.  If you still have excess pudding (and who knew there could be such a thing?), spoon it into ramekins and put it in the fridge for other adventures.  There are lots of things in life worse than an extra bowl of chocolate pudding in the refrigerator.
   There was a little of the strata effect when I attempted this one.  It was not the perfect tunnel my mom always accomplished,  so this cake received the stunning White Chocolate Glaze before I let it out of the house.  Good stuff that glaze on page 331; it  hides mistakes well.  The cake went to a luncheon honoring a plague scientist on a nearby Army base where people devoured it with great relish, at least so I'm told.  

More Troubleshooting and Principles

8. Go darker.  Of course, it just depends, but consider dark cocoa powder.  Hersey makes one that sometimes appears on the shelves of regular grocery stores, and it's good stuff.
9.  Adjust for altitude.  Try the recipe as is the first time, and you may find it works perfectly.  If there's room for improvement though, try tweeking for better rise.  I slightly reduce sugar and baking powder, up the liquid a little, and toss in an extra egg.  If you're going to adjust for altitude yourself, however, it's worth your while to visit the CSU Extension website for more precise advice.
10. Practice makes perfect.  People are usually quite happy to eat your mistakes, but when it needs to be the best cake ever, do a recipe you've made wonderfully before.

Chocolate Cake Disaster Strikes - Day 10

   It's not the cake's fault, nor is it a flaw in the recipe, so I won't even say what cake this is.  I will say this:  pay attention to what you are doing.  Be mindful as you move through life.  Don't go cleaning your caked-up kitchen and talking on the phone while the mixer whips the frosting all by itself.  Turn off the mixer is you must go chase an errant dachsund back into the yard or a black bear off the deck.  Practice salsa dancing spins after your cake is frosted.  Your stand mixer can and will overwhip the cream to butter, and as Michelle explains in her "Note on Whipping Cream" there's just no going back.  Throw it out, and start over for it is ruined.   If you think you can put this oddly textured butter-separated-from-cream concoction on your otherwise lovely cake and hide the mistake with chocolate curls, you are wrong.

Day 11 - Sin City Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

   Thanks to Pampered Chef and to a really good friend, I own an excellent pan for mini-cupcakes.  It's a good thing, too, because salsa dancers don't spend a lot of time standing around eating huge servings of cake, even  beautifully plated cake slices.  The tiny cupcakes are perfect for on-the-go snackers, and this recipe affords enough batter for 24 little cupcakes and two 8 1/2inch cake layers. Tiny cupcakes were a hit with the dancers, especially the salsero who requested "cream cheese frosting with chocolate in it".  Layer cake was well-received by a teacher-artist friend to whom I owe  many, many favors both before and still, after the cake.  While I myself can't ever quite get past my attachment to buttercream frosting, this Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting is lovely to play with as you spread it over the cake layers or dip the tops of cupcake after cupcake.  It goes on smoothly and stays just where you put it.  

# 9 - Chocolate Apricot Upside-Down Cake

   What to do when you need a tasty and beautiful cake for lunch with friends, health conscious people who may rather eat a simpler cake without a whole lot of alchol, coffee, or butter in it?  Michelle Urvater's Chocolate Apricot Upside-Down Cake, page 134, really really fills the bill. All right, it does have over a stick of butter, but with all that fruit as well, it's practically health food. 

Days 7, 13, and 16: No Cake for Children, Pecan Bourbon Chocolate Cake Permutations

  The first  Pecan Bourbon Chocolate Cake came around Fat Tuesday, at the onset of Lent.  Although certainly not Catholic, I love Lent.  I love the idea that you can give up something for a while with an option to maybe pick it up later. If you can get along without it for 40 days and 40 nights, do you really need it at all?  One year someone I know applied this principle to her soon-to-be-ex husband.  This year friends gave up alcohol, chocolate, even coffee.  I went without all sugar except that associated with chocolate cake.
   If you enjoy bourbon and chocolate, this may be your favorite cake.  It's one of mine.  The first cake went as exactly to Michelle Urvater's recipe as possible.  It was phenomenal: intense, rich, overtly smelling of bourbon both during the baking and after.  It was jaw-droppingly expensive to make, requiring 2 cups of "good bourbon" and a full pound of pecans.  This recipe also uses 2 pounds of brown sugar, so it is, as you have guessed, a huge cake.  I adjusted baking time and made it in my bundt pan with cupcakes on the side, but this is no cake for kids.
   Cake # 13 - Another night, another version of  Pecan Bourbon Chocolate Cake.  On this sloshy, cold and wet, almost spring night, I set off for home anticipating the warm comfort of baking.  My first husband asked for  "that bourbon cake", which seems to be his favorite, and I thought the ingredients were in the house, so why not? 
   Arriving home and beginning baking, I immediately saw some ingredients were a little short.  I was down to my last cup of bourbon. Where did that stuff go?  Also the pecan stash had dwindled to 5 ounces.  Therefore, cake #13 deviates wildly from the original recipe.  For the second cup of bourbon I used Petron brand orange liqueur.  To fill in for missing pecans, 10.5 ounces of Ghirrardelle's 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate chips.  Again, an enormous amount of cake batter, plenty for a bundt  and two snack sized cakes.  The snack cakes went by mail to my son in that dark coastal city and to my dad in a large southern state, who appreciates good bourbon and loves cake.  I'm very fond of this new version, and so were the many people who got to eat it because there was so much of it.  Even my mom, who has no interest whatsoever in sweets, said it was really good cake.
   Cake #16, third bourbon cake, whereupon I learn this is not bourbon.  Again baked by request;  used second version entirely, with one small change.  What if this cake could be more about chocolate and alcohol and less about sugar?  Used 1 1/2 pounds of sugar rather than the prescribed 2.  This is my preferred version of Pecan Bourbon Chocolate Cake.
   Except there's no bourbon in mine.  I thought Southern Comfort was a bourbon whiskey.  So did the liquor store man. A former bartender with a business degree, who usually knows everything about everything alcoholic, he did sell me Southern Comfort when I asked for "good bourbon".  Until the 100 cake project, I rarely had occasion to purchase any whiskey, bourbon or otherwise, and  when I did buy bourbon, I always chose Southern Comfort in tribute to Janus Joplin.  Turns out, according to  meticulous internet research,  Southern Comfort is not bourbon at all.  Southern Comfort is a liqueur similar to whiskey,  created by M.W. Heron in New Orleans over 100 years ago.  So these bourbon cakes, when I make them, are not bourbon cakes at all.  They are Southern Comfort Pecan Chocolate Cakes.