Recipe: Weeknight Layer Cake Built for Two

By Snowy0wl

Ingredients

• For the yellow cake:
• 1 cup cake flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cups (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 1 cup sugar (I use organic sugar, which has a slightly coarse grain)
• 3 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• For the chocolate frosting:
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
• 2 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1/4 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Details

Servings 1
Adapted from thekitchn.com

Preparation

Step 1

The recipe is from Flo Braker, who can always be counted on for a reliable winner. It turns out perfectly every time, and the frosting is super easy to work with. All in all, the process of baking and frosting it takes about an hour and forty minutes: half an hour to put the batter together; half an hour to bake; half an hour to cool while making the frosting (these small layers cool quickly); ten minutes to frost (tops). Chances are you’ve got everything you need in your pantry already. Take out your butter in the morning before leaving for work, and start preheating your oven right when you get home.

(Chronicle Books, 2004). My only major note is that I use a coarse-grained organic sugar. The first time I made this cake, I was out of my favorite ultra-fine bakers’ sugar, but I had a bag of organic sugar in the pantry, so I (warily) used that instead. It came out with such an interesting crumb—chewy and a little dense, almost like a pound cake, but fluffier—that I’ve been using it for this cake ever since.

Preheat the oven to 350° F. Butter and flour two 6-inch round cake pans and knock out the excess flour.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter until soft and creamy. Add the sugar and continue beating until the mixture is light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. (If you’re using the organic sugar, the texture of your mixture will be quite gritty.) Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Add the vanilla. On low speed, gradually add the dry ingredients until thoroughly blended.

In a small, heavy saucepan, melt the butter and the chocolate over low heat. In a medium bowl, combine the confectioners’ sugar with the milk and vanilla and stir until smooth. Add the chocolate mixture. Set the bowl over another another bowl half-filled with ice water. With a rubber spatula, beat just until the frosting is thick enough to spread.

As these can't exactly be picked up from Safeway's baking section on the way home from work (as most other things do when deciding to make something on a whim), what do you think could be used as an alternative?

You should purchase light colored aluminum (not dark-colored or nonstick) for best results on cakes made from scratch. (With cake mix you have more leeway...)

6-inch cake pans are a good purchase if you think you might ever make cakes for 2-4 people. You can find them at Wal-Mart or any craft store (Hobby Lobby, Michaels), by Wilton, for well under $5 a pop. Totally worth it. You could finagle some pie dough in there, as well.

Fantastic recipe! I really liked the texture of the frosting. (Though I did make the cake bit chocolate with lavender rather than plain vanilla. I've never cared for vanilla cake chocolate icing. Plus I just planted some things, and well, the lavender smelled so good...)

Another way to solve the "too much cake" problem is just to halve a regular recipe and make one standard layer or 6 cupcakes. Frankly, I'd much rather use the pans I have than buy more--I've already got way too much stuff in my life.

The recipe for one 9-inch layer makes two 6-inch layers. (The area of a circle is pi times radius squared.)

Six-inch two-layer cakes are a wonderful treat for a couple who don't want to over-indulge. I found my pans at Amazon.com. A friend found his at Hobby Lobby, of all places.