How to bake a cake

Yesterday was Bryan’s birthday so he got to choose what kind of cake he wanted and he picked a German Chocolate cake with traditional coconut and pecan caramel frosting. (Side note: how eerie that this was the cake that both of us always requested from our Mothers as children? Do we need more evidence that we were meant for each other?) Those of you who read my blog know that I have an extreme aversion to “box products” or the like. I don’t even like to buy a pre-made dessert, I prefer to make it myself. So I had to haul out the recipe book and the ingredients to make his cake. I decided to deter a bit from the traditional by adding a bittersweet chocolate ganache between the layers rather than the traditional caramel frosting.

First step in baking a cake is to assemble all the ingredients you will need, including the best tool in my kitchen, my KitchenAid stand mixer.

Mix the flour, sugar, eggs, butter, vanilla, baking soda, salt, buttermilk and chocolate together and pour them into three cake pans. It generally works better if all three pans are the same size, but if not you’ll just have to make do.

While your cakes are baking at 350 you should really get started on the frostings. Ask yourself who’s stupid idea it was to have two different types of frosting on one cake and begin to make the chocolate ganache. First step is to chop up an entire bar of baker’s chocolate. No, surprisingly enough, this does not taste good.

After your hands stop cramping, put the chocolate into a saucepan with 1 cup of whipping cream (hey nobody said this was a healthy cake) and melt together.

Depending on your chopping speed and skills the cakes should be just about done. Check them with a toothpick and if done, pull them out and put on cooling racks.

While the cakes are cooling you need to get started on the caramel, pecan & coconut frosting. Dump the evaporated milk, butter, sugar, egg yolks and vanilla into a saucepan and stir over medium heat. Don’t believe the recipe when it says this only takes 8-10 minutes to achieve the color of caramel you want – it takes much longer. Keep stirring and keep cussing the mixture. Switch to a whisk because the damn wooden spoon is just not cutting it.

Take a break from stirring the frosting from hell to start assembling the cake. Get out the cake stand (how gay is that I not only have a cake stand, but I have two cake stands?) and put the biggest cake on the bottom, cover with the chocolate ganache, top with the next cake and cover it with ganache as well. Finish with the third cake and wish that all your cake pans were the same size because this cake is going to look a bit lopsided.

Once the frosting from hell is finally complete get it on the cake. Don’t forget the sides and hope that no one notices how lopsided the cake is. Taste is more important than looks right?

Have a piece, it’s yummy – looks be damned!