Magnolia Bakery Yellow Cake with Chocolate Frosting

By Addie

Yesterday, in need of a little baking therapy, I made the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook yellow cake. It was excellent — fine crumbed, moist, soft, and kind of a cross between sponge cake and regular yellow cake. I liked it so much I decided to make a similar recipe and compare the two back to back. I’ll post that one in a little later, but here’s the adapted recipe for the Magnolia cake.

The full recipes makes 2 tall or 3 thinner 9-inch layers, but I halved it and made two rather thin 8 inch layers which gave me a pretty high ratio of frosting to cake. Next time I’ll either make the full recipe or halve it and use 1 9-inch round cake and not bother with the layering. Overall, this recipe was a solid A because it tasted good, was easy to make, and didn’t require any speciality ingredients other than the self-rising flour.

Ingredients

• Cake:
• 1 1/2 cups self-rising flour (6.75 oz)
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (5.65 oz)
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 cup milk
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• Chocolate Frosting:
• 2 oz unsweetened chocolate
• 2 oz semi-sweet chocolate
• 16 tablespoons unsalted or salted butter
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup milk plus more if needed
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• Pinch or two of salt

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Spray two or three round 9-inch cake pans with flour-added cooking spray. If you use two, bake-time will be longer.

Combine the flours in a small bowl and set aside.

Beat the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat for about 5 minutes.

Add the vanilla, then add the eggs, one at a time, beating for 30 seconds after each addition.

Add the flour and milk alternately, beginning and ending with the flour and stirring by hand or using lowest speed of mixer until thoroughly mixed. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended.

Divide the batter between the pans and bake at 350 F for 20-25 minutes for 3 pans, or about 30 minutes for 2 pans (deeper cake means longer bake time).

Cool in pans for about 10 minutes, then flip from pans and let cool on a rack. Frost with chocolate frosting.
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Chocolate Frosting:

Melt both chocolates in microwave or double boiler and set aside to cool.

Beat the butter until creamy. Stir in the cocoa power, about a cup of the powdered sugar, and the cooled melted chocolate. Scrape sides of bowl and beat well. Add remaining powdered sugar, then add milk, vanilla and salt, beating and scraping until you get the consistency you like.