Auntie Jennifen's Chocolate Cake

School holidays, that time of year when you slow down, relax, eat healthy, and accomplish great things.

HA! Just kidding.

You hire a cheap, duct taped car, drive a distance to go and see lots of family members (and some breathtaking scenery), then stuff your face every half hour all day, every day. You get nothing productive done, and then wonder why your clothes feel all tight and you are behind on your studies...

But it's worth it because you get to taste some pretty amazing chocolate cake - not too rich, just the right amount of chocolate, and, er, MOIST! And handily, your sister-in-law not only HAS the recipe, she is willing to share it.

Now, you don't just make this cake on any old kind of day. No, you wait for one of those days when you are running late to pick up your youngest child, after which you need to go and pick up your other two, and you head into the shops to make sure you have lunch and other bits and bobs needed and you get to the self scanning till and realise...you don't actually have your purse with you. You know exactly where it is, now that you think about it (note: never change bags, ever) but that isn't going to help you pay for the basket of shopping that you don't have time to come back and get later. One of those days where you also find out the school has planned the individual photo portraits for Hallowe'en, and that happens to be when your son's class will be skiing for half the day, and your daughter's class is having a costume party. One of those days when you work for a ghost tour company and things are going a bit mental. This is the perfect sort of day to make a chocolate cake.

So yes, after children were collected and fed (eventually) I gathered ingredients together and started throwing them into a bowl.

Bubble, bubble, toil, and trouble...

And I began to mix.

Then I poured in boiling water and mixed some more.

Until I had this beautiful, runny batter in front of me.

Funnily enough, some people arrived to help me with it.

My daughter's top is great for hiding stains, I was relieved to discover

It was poured into two tins, in uneven quantities, naturally, and then they grew to unnatural sizes.

And, because I am such a skilled baker, they sank a bit.

I stuck them in the fridge to cool quickly, then moved onto the icing, beginning with butter, cocoa, and espresso powder, then getting ready to add icing sugar and milk until the final product was ready.

Then I had one of my special moments. You know, one of those special times when you have three people in the kitchen talking to you at once, and you just mean to bend down to dive under the mixer's wire extended across the not-so-greatly designed kitchen to get to the fridge for the milk, only you misjudge the distance and bash your head so hard on a corner that blood starts pouring down your face? And your husband asks you what's wrong with you as you sit crying on the floor with your three year old handing you tissues "for your drips"?

Does that happen to you, too?

Looks like I'll be Harry Potter for Hallowe'en. This is the cut cleaned up and swelling subsided:

Not to be deterred, I had my assistant hold the bowl while I applied pressure (and an ice pack) to the wound so I could keep mixing. What else was I to do? Give up on a cake? Pfft, I DON'T THINK SO!

If there was any time chocolate cake was needed, now was the moment.

My precious...

After my family had sampled it

The rest was sent along to the lovely folk at work who are keeping folk entertained this weekend as part of Hallowe'en celebrations. The cake was not given out of any real generosity on my part, you understand, but instead to prevent me from sobbing and eating all of it in one sitting.

If you find you are having the sort of day requiring this cake you can get a pretty and printable version of the recipe here, or you can settle for the usual copy & paste below.

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar
• ¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1½ teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon espresso powder
• 1 cup milk
• ½ cup vegetable or canola oil
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup boiling water
• Chocolate Buttercream Frosting Recipe

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350º F. Prepare two 9-inch cake pans by spraying with baking spray or buttering and lightly flouring.
2. For the cake:
3. Add flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt and espresso powder to a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer. Whisk through to combine or, using your paddle attachment, stir through flour mixture until combined well.
4. Add milk, vegetable oil, eggs, and vanilla to flour mixture and mix together on medium speed until well combined. Reduce speed and carefully add boiling water to the cake batter. Beat on high speed for about 1 minute to add air to the batter.
5. Distribute cake batter evenly between the two prepared cake pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick or cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean.
6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for about 10 minutes, remove from the pan and cool completely.
7. Frost cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.

Frosting:

Ingredients

• 1½ cups butter (3 sticks), softened
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 5 cups confectioner’s sugar
• ½ cup milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• ½ teaspoon espresso powder

Instructions

1. Add cocoa to a large bowl or bowl of stand mixer. Whisk through to remove any lumps.
2. Cream together butter and cocoa powder until well-combined.
3. Add sugar and milk to cocoa mixture by adding 1 cup of sugar followed by about a tablespoon of milk. After each addition has been combined, turn mixer onto a high speed for about a minute. Repeat until all sugar and milk have been added.
4. Add vanilla extract and espresso powder and combine well.
5. If frosting appears too dry, add more milk, a tablespoon at a time until it reaches the right consistency. If it appears to wet and does not hold its form, add more confectioner’s sugar, a tablespoon at a time until it reaches the right consistency.

Apple Coffee Cake

October break is here, and with it, a blog post for the first time in a while cause, you know, life.

In the USA, October break means nothing. There, children are pushed out of public schools for three months of summer to wreak havoc, then once they have finally forgotten everything their teachers laboured to insert into their resistant craniums, they are locked back inside the institution's doors for the remainder of the year (apart from two weeks at Christmas and a week in spring). Meanwhile, here in Britain one must always check one's calendar to see if school is on that day, for the schools don't open their doors for such significant cultural events as the following:

Christmas
Easter
Autumn*
February*
and...the ever significant, can't ever miss it:
Bank holiday

I say bank holiday, singular, but it feels like there are dozens of the bastards, usually falling on Mondays, which usually have no great significance other than to say "feck it, let's have a day off, just to mess with the parents looking forward to Monday, shall we?"

The consequence of this schedule is that you'll be rolling along, enjoying your little school routine of drop-offs, pick-ups, working when they are at school, when all of a sudden the school refuses to take them for a day, a week, or, if you're really lucky, the school announces that technically the inner walls aren't attached to the outer walls and the roof isn't technically attached to the walls either so they have to close indefinitely.

I really, really hate it when they do that last one, by the way.

So here we are, celebrating autumn. And Autumn means apples, apples stolen in the black of night from the local angry farmer who came after us with his pitchfork.** They taste best poached, but a close second is to make apple coffee cake. At this point, Americans all say "oooh- coffee cake! and Brits all say "apple and coffee? In a cake? uh...<tentative bite> wow, I can't taste the coffee at all!" That's because it is a cake meant to be consumed with coffee, it doesn't actually contain any. I had been told it was a German thing to call it coffee cake, then I spoke to my German colleagues all chill about "coffee cake" and how it doesn't have any coffee in it and they stared in that special, direct, mean-what-they-say that their nation has perfected and said "no, we do not call that coffee cake in Germany" so I guess it's just another silly Americanism.


You know how a lot of the time I take photos of all the steps along the way? Screw that, here are some apples on some batter that I made. Incidentally, one of the great things about having kids is that first thing in the morning you can send them to the shops for ingredients.

Son, I couldn't have made this without you. 

I sliced the apples instead of roughly chopping them cause I felt fancy, but I didn't make them uniform, because I lack both the precision and the will to do that. 

This is the struesel topping I made in the food processor. I should have made more. Too much topping is always better than too little.

Here is the evidence that I should have made more - you can never have too much struesel on coffee cake.

unbaked

Baked. Yes, I know I missed a spot.

And here is the final, somewhat thin for coffee cake, product, right before I stuck it in the freezer with all of its attractive brothers and sisters (as well as the ugly brother who has the same mother and father but somehow lost out on the looks lottery) so that I can better transport the goods to a mystery location tomorrow. And so I didn't shove all the cake in my face immediately, because these guys are like Pringles. 

Soft cake base, gooey, tart apple middle, and crunchy top

So wish me luck over the next week as I try to master the fine details of financial reporting (INCLUDING the ever exciting group reports pro formas) while at the same time keeping three children fed, clothed, and entertained with all kinds of educational activities. 

HA HA HA HA!!

Please pass me the cake now.

I can't find a handy link for the recipe, so forgive me if I leave that typing for another day. Alternatively, open up a copy of Joy of Cooking and make their Sour Cream Coffee Cake with Apple topping, using yogurt instead of sour cream and Struesel I. 

*They don't shut for the entirety of Autumn of February, as that would be silly. Instead each time children are given a week off. Plus, usually, a random Monday added on just to mess with you. 

**the apples weren't actually stolen - my colleague has an apple tree and gifted them to me.