Yellow Cake with Bittersweet Chocolate Buttercream

If Candyland was real, or if Tim Burton had a cupcake shop, the cupcakes might look something like these little monstrosities. Yellow cake with chocolate frosting is my favorite cake combination, but lest a cupcake with classic flavors ever appear to be boring, I went as Sega as possible with the buttercream (and my new, shitty pastry bag from Safeway). This is the best yellow-cake recipe in my (and now your) reperetoire, and the bittersweet tinge to the frosting adds an unexpected and welcome departure from the sticky milk chocolates of childhood.

Check that little guy on the left! It's like Japanime in frosting form.

Awesome Yellow Cake

Using my supreme math skillz, I halved the following recipe to make 18 cupcakes. I haven’t provided the halved quantities since I left my sheet of math skillz conclusions at home (Woo! Blogging from work!). This makes one three-layer 9-inch round cake. Both recipes adapted from

Sky High: Irresistable Triple Layer Cakes.

3 3/4 cups cake flour

2 1/2 cups sugar

1 tablespoon plus 2 3/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 sticks (10 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/4 cups plus 1/3 cup buttermilk

5 whole eggs

2 egg yolks

2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Butter three 9-inch round cake pans. Line the bottom of each pan with a round of parchment or waxed paper and butter the paper.

2. Combine the cake flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixer bowl. With the mixer on low speed, blend for 30 seconds. Add the butter and 1 1/4 cup of the buttermilk. Mix on low speed briefly to blend; then raise the speed to medium and beat until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes.

3. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the whole eggs, egg yolks, vanilla, and the remaining 1/3 cup buttermilk until well blended. Pour one-third of the egg mixture into the cake batter at a time, folding it in completely after each addition. There will be 9 cups of batter; our 3 cups batter into each pan.

4. Bake for 26 to 28 minutes (between 20 and 25 minutes for cupcakes—but start checking at 15 minutes just to be sure!), or until a cake tester or wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

5. Turn the layers out onto wire racks by placing a rack on top of a pan, inverting it, and lifting off the pan. Peel off backs, let cool, and do what you will with frosting options!

Bittersweet Chocolate Buttercream

7 ounces bittersweet chocolate

1 cup heavy cream

1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1. Melt the chocolate with the cream in a double boiler or metal bowl set
over a pan of simmering water. Whisk to blend well. Remove from heat and let stand, whisking occasionally, until the chocolate mixture thickens to the consistency of mayonnaise (Gross, but true. Be patient, because the thicker this gets, the fluffier your frosting will be).

2. Place the butter in a large mixer bowl and with an electric mixer on medium speed, whip the butter until light and fluffy. Add the chocolate cream and whip until lighter in color and somewhat stiff, about three minutes. Do not whip too long or the frosting may begin to separate.

Render-You-Speechless Chocolate Chip Cookies

Oh hai! I am as big as a golf ball!

Oh hi! You were maybe expecting words, but there is only gluttony, excessive drool, glasses of milk, disavowal of all sharing principles, and an absolute replacement of anything nutritious in my diet with cookies served in multiples of six (read: seven). Word. Do not ignore the authority of the recipe when it tells you to refrigerate the dough for 36 hours; I am now a David Leite neophyte. I made a batch of these cookies before and after a 36-hour refrigeration, and they were astoundingly more buttery, crispy on the outsides, flavorful, and soft in the middle after a stint in the fridge. Just like me! Now I am softer in the middle too!

Leite's Chocolate Chip Cookie
David Leite, New York Times

I just used all-purpose flour. The weights are provided for the fastest, easiest measurements, but I'm not fast or easy (snerk), so I measured.

2 cups minus 2 tablespoons (8 1/2 ounces) cake flour
1 2/3 cups (8 1/2 ounces) bread flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content (I just used Ghiradelli chips in the brown bag--took a little less than two bags)
Sea salt


1. Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

2. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment (or an egg beater!), cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Add your mega amounts of chocolate and mix well. (These latter stages of dough mixage did not work so well for me. My dough was hella thick, and I practically broke a wooden spoon trying to stir all of this up at the end. Just be patient, and use your hands to do the final incorporation, if need be.)

4. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. (Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.)

3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat.

4. Scoop fat mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet. I used an ice cream scoop that holds nearly three tablespoons for this step, and my cookies worked out just fine. Do not flatten. They are perfectly excellent cooked in all of their golf-ball glory. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 15 to 20 minutes (mine took exactly 16 minutes, the original recipe recommends 18). Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day.

Cakewalk: Best Chocolate Cake Recipe with Almond Buttercream

This is a weighty claim to make, I know, but this is the best g.d. cake I have ever eaten. It seems like it would be a mocha cake, but it's really just a rad cake that gets all rich and delicious with the addition of coffee, which through some sort of chemistry science I do not understand, makes chocolate taste better. Science=delicious.

According to Corby Kummer, the cupcake pandemic is really only worth cheering on in the hopes that somebody somewhere will finally get the cupcake right. Novelty cupcakes and overkill cuteness be damned, and let’s get rid of dry cakes and grainy or greasy frosting while we’re at it. Excepting the rare encounter with a truly killer cupcake, I always leave bake shops feeling totally suckered by cute decorations and swirly buttercreams, and then immediately disappointed by bland cake and stale frosting. The proceeding recipe is like the panacea for paltry cake.

Besides being sifter-less, I was (and still am) clearly pastry-bag-less.

Best Chocolate Cake

To instantly disenchant yourself with cupcakeries, top this recipe with your favorite frosting. I'd recommend a boiled vanilla-bourbon frosting or chocolate ganache, because really I'm not so into buttercream. Butter=good on bread, freaky on cake. I'm not sure where this recipe is from originally. It's ubiquitous online, though you might see it with different proportions since it was originally made to be a ten-inch layer cake. The following proportions will work for two dozen cupcakes or a double layer caked baked in two nine-inch pans.

2 ounces high-quality semi-sweet chocolate (I used Ghiradelli)
1 cup hot brewed coffee (high-quality coffee is preferable, decaf. is fine; take care to avoid burning the coffee)
2 cups sugar
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process—I used an extra dark powder)
1 1/3 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup well-shaken buttermilk (1 cup regular milk plus 1 tablespoon white distilled vinegar, mixed together and left for ten minutes to curdle, will also work)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F and prepare cupcake tins with liners. Lightly grease the pan before inserting the liners for easy removal of cupcakes.

Finely chop chocolate and in a bowl combine with hot coffee. Let mixture stand, stirring occasionally, until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth.

Into a large bowl sift together sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In another large bowl with an electric mixer beat eggs until thickened slightly and lemon colored (about 3 minutes with a standing mixer or 5 minutes with a hand-held mixer). Slowly add oil, buttermilk, vanilla, and melted chocolate mixture to eggs, beating until combined well. Add sugar mixture and beat on medium speed until just combined well.

Divide batter into cupcake tins, filling each one 3/4 full of batter. Bake for 25 to 27 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Do not overbake. If your oven bakes unevenly, be sure to rotate the pans halfway through baking. Let cupcakes cool in their pans for about 10 minutes, then gently remove, place on a rack, and let cool until ready to frost. Cupcakes are best eaten within the day, but will keep for three.

Almond Buttercream

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
3 egg whites
3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 teaspoons almond extract

In a small saucepan on medium heat, bring sugar and water to boil. Stir to dissolve the sugar, and use a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides of the pan and keep the sugar from building up. Boil until the mixture reaches the soft-ball stage, or 238 degrees F. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, test for doneness by dripping the mixture into a glass of cold water; the mixture should adhere in pliable balls when ready.

In a large bowl, beat the egg whites on medium until frothy and pale, and continue to beat while slowly adding the hot syrup. Raise the speed to medium-high after all the syrup has been added, and beat until the mixture has cooled to body temperature.

Reduce speed to medium, and gradually beat in butter, 2 to 3 tablespoons at a time. At the end of adding the butter, the mixture will fall apart, but don’t despair! Keep beating and eventually the frosting will come together in a fluffy whip. Add the extract, and continue beating on medium until buttercream has the consistency of whipped butter. Frost your cakes, leftover cinnamon buns, your ice cream, your baby brother, what/whomever.

Non-Onomatopoetic Cinnamon Buns

There are three things I have missed from Pilsbury cinnamon rolls during the past six or so years of their absence from my life. First, is the firecracker “pop” that sounds off when you peel back the Pilsbury label and that would send our cats yowling to cower under the kitchen table. Second, is the resounding “thwap” that that heavy log of dough would make when it fell out of its aluminum tube. And third, is the circular cake pan I used to bake the rolls in so they would hug sides and bake up puffy and close. I might miss the convenience of Pilsbury buns too, but it’s hard to feel cheated when your kitchen is filled with the scent of homemade cinnamon rolls and you can excuse yourself for eating three or four since you made them. Oh yes, I operate on a labor-based baking economy. Homemade buns mean I eat at least three, maybe four to account for inflation, and I surely dip a finger in the glaze here and there to preempt my tax refund. And even though the sounds of homemade cinnamon buns aren’t as exciting as Pilsbury’s onomatopoetics, I absolutely enjoyed the suspense of seeing (literally watching) the dough rise and hearing the cinnamon sizzle. This recipe pays off big, in aesthetics, taste, and a certain lack of nutrition facts dictating whether or not five buns is considered a single serving (it is, promise).




Cinnamon Buns with Cream Cheese Glaze
Via Bon Appétit

Dough
1 cup whole milk
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 1/2 cups (or more) unbleached all purpose flour, divided
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
2 1/4 teaspoons rapid-rise or instant yeast (from 1 envelope)
1 teaspoon salt
Nonstick vegetable oil spray

Filling
3/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon (plus more if you're really into cinnamon)
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
Pinch of salt

Glaze
4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

For dough: Combine milk and butter in glass measuring cup. Microwave on high until butter melts and mixture is just warmed, about 30 to 45 seconds. Pour into bowl, and add 1 cup flour, sugar, egg, yeast, and salt. Beat on low speed with an eggbeater for 3 minutes, stopping occasionally to scrape down sides of bowl. Add additional 2 1/2 cups flour. Beat on low until flour is absorbed and dough is sticky, scraping down sides of bowl. If dough is very sticky, add more flour by tablespoonfuls until dough begins to form ball and pulls away from sides of bowl. Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface. Knead until smooth and elastic, adding more flour if sticky, about 8 minutes. Form into ball.

Lightly oil large bowl with nonstick spray. Transfer dough to bowl, turning to coat. Cover bowl with plastic wrap, then kitchen towel. Let dough rise in warm draft-free area until doubled in volume, about 2 hours. I let mine rise in the oven, which had been preheated to 200 degrees F. the hour before, then turned off and left open while I prepared the dough. DC was cold that day, so the warming precaution was necessary.

For filling: Mix brown sugar, cinnamon and pinch of salt in medium bowl.

Press down dough. Transfer to floured work surface. Roll out to 15×11-inch rectangle. Spread butter over dough, leaving 1/2-inch border. Sprinkle cinnamon mixture evenly over butter. Starting at the longer side, roll dough into log, pinching gently to keep it rolled up. With seam side down, trim ends straight if they are uneven, and cut remaining dough crosswise with thin sharp knife into 18 equal slices (I made 16, so each was a little plumper).

Spray two 9-inch square glass baking dishes (I used a 9 x 14-inch rectangle dish) with nonstick spray. Divide rolls between baking dishes, arranging cut side up (there will be almost no space between rolls). Cover baking dishes with plastic wrap, then kitchen towel. Let dough rise in warm draft-free area until almost doubled in volume, 40 to 45 minutes, though this part may take you longer. I let mine rise overnight in the refrigerator, then took it out and let it come to room temperature for an hour and 15 minutes in the morning before baking.

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 375°F. Sprinkle rolls with extra cinnamon if you so desire, which I did, because cinnamon is rad and highly delicious. Bake rolls until tops are golden, about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and invert immediately onto rack. Cool 10 minutes. Turn rolls right side up (I skipped all this and glazed mine in the pan).

For glaze: Combine cream cheese, powdered sugar, butter, and vanilla in medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat until smooth. Spread glaze on rolls. Serve warm or at room temperature.

No-Nostalgia Chewy Amaretti Cookies

Just discovered: Click the photo to see a close-up of the amaretti crannies—food pornography at its finest.

There is nothing nostalgic about these cookies. "Chewy amaretti" doesn't exactly scream "childhood," and thank goodness because I am perfectly sick of nostalgia these days—no disrespect to my previously reverential posts. Simple and satisfying but wearing a fancy dress, the cookies provide respite from wanderlust and from your urgent desire to get back home. These will snap you into shape, reminding you that new good things are at your fingertips all the time, and that San Francisco is not a panacea, though it is a nice idea.

This is a delicious and welcome change from the everyday cookie—make them. Fill them with lemon curd or cherry jam. I think the chocolate ganache was a little overwhelming and that an almond-complementing jelly (raspberry or even strawberry if you have a sweet tooth) or custard (vanilla) would work best. And don't worry if you don't actually own a food processor—my housemate's coffee grinder and some of my most unheard of patience worked just fine.








I had no idea what amaretti meant before I made these. I thought it was a liqueur. If your taste-testers need help understanding what exactly it is you are foisting upon them, say these are "Italian macarons" and you'll be on the more right, less booze-guided track than I was on. Also, as you can tell from the photos, I baked cookies that were both well-done and medium-rare. I ended up preferring the lighter set, but the almond flavor is more pronounced in the darker ones. I'd say make 'em both ways.

No-Nostalgia Chewy Amaretti
Adapted from Gourmet, January 2009

1 (7-ounce) tube pure almond paste (not marzipan)
1 cup sugar
Pinch salt
2 large egg whites at room temperature for at least 30 minutes

1. Preheat oven to 300°F and line two large sheet pans with parchment paper (splurge for the parchment paper if you don't already have any!).

2. Pulse almond paste, sugar, and salt in a food processor until sandy, then add egg whites and puree until smooth. If you're me, you'll do this step in a coffee grinder, meaning that egg whites should be added in a large, separate bowl and mixed with an egg beater.

3. Transfer batter to pastry bag fitted with a 3/8-inch tip and pipe 3/4-inch rounds (1/3 inch high) about 1-inch apart in pans. Dip a fingertip in water and gently tamp down any peaks. When I read that step, I saw a bunch of numbers flying at me and decided to just cut the corner off a sandwich bag and pipe out rounds through that until I thought they were big enough—about the size of quarters.

4. Bake, rotating and switching position of pans halfway through (but only if you don't want to test the light-dark thing), until golden and puffed, 15 to 18 minutes.

5. Let cookies cool almost completely in their pans. Once cool, lift the parchment off the pans and slide the cookies off with a spatula. Sandwich the cookies using jam (cherry! apricot!), ganache (about 4 ounces semi-sweet chips to 2 tablespoons heavy cream), or a custard.

Eat, enjoy, and forget about San Francisco—they don't have chewy amaretti cookies there anyway.