Welcome and Chocolate Cake

Hello!

I proposed the idea of a family food blog to my family as a way of encouraging them to cook more.  I love cooking and and food takes up the majority of my free time, whether it cooking my favorite comfort food or trying something unusual at a new restaurant.  I'm a college student, however, so free time is hard to come by.  But I just finished up my finals for the year and so I have a summer free of standard board meals and time to cook while I stay at college and work on research.  

Today was my roommate's birthday and so, since I was not busy packing up or moving into a new room, I had time to make a cake.  Chocolate cake has been a favorite in our family for a while (or at least it is the cake of my choice).  My mom generally makes it with this very rich chocolate frosting that almost tastes like fudge.  A while ago, I started putting chocolate mousse between the layers.  This turned in to me simply using chocolate mousse as a frosting.  I like it better than frosting (and maybe even better than the cake) so I decided to up the ratio of mousse to everything else as much as possible.  It makes for a very rich cake and you have to refrigerate it so if that sounds like too much, use chocolate frosting instead.  You can also simply serve the chocolate mousse by itself with some raspberries or a piece of good solid chocolate for an easy but rich dessert.

Grandma's Chocolate Cake

• 2/3 cup melted butter
• 4 oz. unsweetened chocolate
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 2 1/2 cups cake flour
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 cup boiling water

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350° F.  
Melt butter and chocolate together either in a double boiler or in a microwave (If using the microwave, microwave for 30 second intervals stirring between each until melted.)  Cream together with sugar and mix in eggs buttermilk and vanilla.  Sift in flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt and mix well.  Lastly, add the cup of boiling water.  Batter will be thin. 
Line 2 round cake pans with wax paper, grease and flour.  Fill 3/4 full. (A large 9x14 pan, greased and floured, can also be used) Bake at 350 degrees for 25 - 30 minutes or until done.

Chocolate Mousse

• 2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 6 oz.  bittersweet chocolate
• vanilla (optional)
• powered sugar (optional)

Directions:

In a small sauce pan, heat 1/2 cup of cream.  Chop or break chocolate.  Just as the cream is starting to simmer, remove it from the heat and drop in chocolate.  Let it stand for about 5 minutes without stirring.  After 5 minutes, stir the chocolate and cream mixture until smooth but do not over stir.

In the meantime, in a large bowl beat remaining cream until soft peaks form.  (You are basically making whipped cream so if you want a sweeter mousse add a few table spoons of powdered sugar to the cream or a 1/2 tsp of vanilla.)

In another bowl, lighten the chocolate mixture with about half of the whipped cream.  Do this by folding a few spoonfuls of chocolate and whipped cream at a time and folding them together.  After all of the chocolate mixture is lightened, gently fold it into the remaining whipped cream.  

The chocolate mousse should be refrigerated but should be taken out of the fridge about 20 minutes prior to use.  If it is too cold it tends to have a bit of a powdery texture instead of the silkiness associated with chocolate mousse.

(Note:  when I made the mousse today, I had no bittersweet chocolate and instead used unsweetened chocolate with about a tablespoon of powdered sugar.)

To assemble the cake:

If the cake is to warm when you put the chocolate mousse it, the mousse will simply melt and ooze out so make sure the cake is completely cool before you put the mousse on.  Put the bottom layer on your serving dish.  (If the top of your cake is very rounded, you might want to turn it upside-down to have a flatter surface to put the mousse on.)  Spread mousse on the top of the layer about 1/2 an inch thick and leaving about 1/4 -1/2 of and inch around the edge.  Refrigerate the layer with the mousse for about 10 to 15 minutes in order to allow the mousse to stiffen.  After removing from fridge, place the second layer on top and frost the cake with the remaining mousse.  There may be a bit left over, but you should have no problem eating this right up.

- Sophie

(P.S. I apologize for my lack of camera other than my cell phone and any sort of photography skills.)