Yellow Cake + Chocolate Frosting

Today, July 15, is my blog's 4th birthday - time for cake!   In his book The Modern Baker,  Nick Malgieri has a recipe he calls the "Perfect Birthday Cake" - yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  That just so happens to be my favorite combination, a perfect way to celebrate my blogoversary.

n.o.e.'s notes:

-  Some talented and dedicated bakers have been baking their way through Nick Malgieri's book as part of an effort called the Modern Baker Challenge.  I have, on rare occasions, joined them.  This post is my contribution to the cake section of the Challenge.  I started this blog in response to a different baking challenge - weekly baking of every recipe in Dorie Greenspan and her book, Baking From My Home to Yours with the original Tuesdays With Dorie group.  The Modern Baker Challenge has given me a fun opportunity to dip, however sporadically, into another baking challenge.  The Modern Bakers do not post the recipes, so if you'd like to bake this cake, you'll have to find a copy of the book!  It has come out in paperback, so you can pick it up for a reasonable price.

-  Although I'm posting this cake in honor of my 4th blogoversary, I actually baked it for my book group's 6th anniversary.  Hence the "6" candle you can see in the picture below.

-  I baked 1/2 recipe in my 6" cake pans.  I ended up with layers that were quite petite.

-  Because there was so little batter in the small pans, the cake baked very quickly.  In fact, I probably over-baked it by just the tiniest bit, which was totally annoying.

-  The cake layers had firm structure and a fine, close crumb.  There were some mysterious "swiss cheese" type holes in the cake but I have no idea why they were there.

-  You can see from the frosting how my layers weren't totally level.  I didn't want to trim them because the layers were already so small.  So I just turned the top layer upside down, leaving a flat top and bottom, but a sizeable gap in the side, which I filled with frosting.

-  Nick's Perfect Birthday Cake combines yellow layers with a fudgy ganache frosting.  

the verdict:

I was very surprised by this cake.  It could not have been more different from the standard yellow box cakes of my previous baking life.  The layers were improbably soft and tender, despite a possible minute too long in oven.  The cake was light but not dense, dry but not sawdusty.  The intense ganache frosting was a perfect complement.  It took me until my second slice to figure out that I loved the cake!

Whole Wheat Currant Bread

As much as I love to bake with yeast (and I love it enough to have started a bread blog!), I forgot how much fun it is to bake a quick bread. This Whole Wheat Currant Bread is about as quick as a quick bread can get; it's oil-based, so no messing around with softening or melting butter. The currants don't have to be washed, peeled, cooked, or chopped, just measure and stir 'em in. An added bonus to this recipe: it's a deliciously easy way to work whole grains into your diet.


n.o.e.'s notes:

- This bread is from Nick Malgieri's The Modern Baker. I received this book for my birthday last year - in June - and only managed to bake one recipe from it. When Phyl of Of Cabbages and Kings (@gaaarp on twitter) formed a group to bake through the book, I jumped at the chance. Well, to clarify: my jump was quick but not deep! As much as I'd love to bake every single recipe in The Modern Baker, I can't swing that kind of commitment. Luckily this group is quite relaxed and flexible - there is no participation or posting requirement. Being a member of the group will give me the incentive to dip into the book from time to time, joining the others when I can and using the resources of this excellent group as an aid to my baking. Phyl has structured the baking so that the group will spend 3 months on each of the book's four sections. Different bakers will take turns "hosting" the recipes, and this bread is the one that I chose.

- Because this is "my" recipe, I've included some process pictures, for the second time in a week! And like the Swedish Visiting Cake, this recipe is so simple that the pictures are a little superfluous.

- I baked 2/3 recipe in a smallish loaf pan.

- For whole wheat flour, I used King Arthur's Irish Style Wholemeal Flour, which is a rough textured soft whole wheat flour made from red wheat.

- The group doesn't publish the recipes from The Modern Baker, but here are the steps that I followed:

Whisk eggs with sugar and brown sugar;


then whisk in milk (I used whole milk, but you could also use buttermilk)


and oil.



With a rubber (silicone in my case) spatula, fold in a mixture of whole wheat flour, baking powder and salt,


then add currants


and fold them in.


Scrape the batter into a loaf pan and bake in a 350 degree oven.

the verdict:

The bread is sweeter than I thought it'd be, which comes mostly from the currants. The flour I used gave the bread a nice rustic platform, and I could taste the brown sugar's molasses flavor. But the currants, it's really their show, and they perform admirably. My favorite way to eat this bread was toasted, hot with butter.