I made chocolate cake for our Mother’s Day dinner. (All the mothers did a little cooking, Steve is grilling.) As you know, I bake a lot and I’m not sure why, but this cake fought back.
I made the cake layers yesterday. The recipe starts with melted, un-sweetened chocolate pieces. After that cools, you add it and the vanilla to the batter in the mixer. I added the vanilla to the lukewarm chocolate thinking that would make adding them to the batter easier. Not so much… the chocolate got stiff (I believe the term is ‘seized up’). I managed to blend it all and the batter looked normal so I put the cake in the overn. The layers didn’t rise as much as usual and the cake was a little crumbly but I figured that that would be OK.
Today I made the frosting. It calls for a box of powdered sugar. I didn’t have a box, I had a bag, so I measured the sugar (4 scant cups). I must has used too much because the frosting got hard not long after I started spreading it. In fact, it didn’t take long before it started tearing the cake apart. I gave up on it when I made one obvious divot in the top edge. Sigh.
I made another half-batch of frosting and it hardened pretty fast too. Mom says it could be the humidity in the air.
Honestly, while it isn’t a show-stopper, the finished cake has kind of a nice texture… tree-bark-ish. I know that it will taste good and that’s what really matters.
I did think, though, that if I were a new cook and this happened I might be tempted to give up on making cakes from scratch. If that’s you, please don’t let one cake stop you from baking. These things happen :-).
Piece O Cake Blog 
Look great to me! It also gave me a good laugh! Thanks Becky.
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Becky, that is why I have mostly given up on layer cakes and use 9×13 pans-ha. I have a cake plate just like yours. Has a shiny dome cover.
Can’t wait to take classes from you in August in Fort Wayne IN
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That still looks delicious!
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It was, in fact, very tasty!
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Next time the humidity is up during baking, try this trick
Use one cup container (deep coffee mug, glass measuring cup) and a knife, spoon or a small spreader (like what you might use for a cheese spread)
Add HOT water to container. Dip your choice of spreader in the hot water and then you can swirl the frosting.
((((((( around the sides, perhaps
on top arrange swirls from center to edge of cake
works !!!
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Looks good to me. I love hearing from you! ab
Original Message —– From: Piece O Cake Blog To: amandabyrd@charter.net Sent: Sunday, May 11, 2014 6:12 PM Subject: [New post] Well, it’ll taste good…
Becky Goldsmith posted: “I made chocolate cake for our Mother’s Day dinner. (All the mothers did a little cooking, Steve is grilling.) As you know, I bake a lot and I’m not sure why, but this cake fought back. I made the cake layers yesterday. The recipe starts with melted”
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I make a delicious spirited marble cake with spirited chocolate frosting for most of our birthdays & it is delicious (but not gluten free, so wouldn’t work for you). The directions for the frosting say to melt the chocolate with the creme de cacao. It seizes up every time. Chocolate does not like liquid when it is hot. Unfortunately, I usually forget & follow the directions each time… When I remember not to add the creme de cacao to the chocolate, it is SO much easier to blend the chocolate into the butter, sugar & egg mixture. I think the idea of putting the spirits in with the chocolate for the melting step is to cook off the alcohol. Maybe that amount of alcohol wouldn’t hurt anyone! (The grandkids love this cake too!)
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Homemade chocolate cakes are the best no matter how not picture perfect they turn out. It still will be a good tasting Piece O Cake. 🙂
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Try the layered chocolate cake from Hershey’s.com. It turned out wonderful and was simple to make. Even the frosting was easy and good!i froze the layers after they cooled so when I frosted them they didn’t tear up at all. Defrosted for a few hours and it was perfect!
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