Finding the Best Chocolate Cake Recipe (Part 2)

[CatPoet]

I will show the result, it didnt rise as much as it normaly does BUT it did rise  and it looks airy and not dense.  I am about to test in in 1 hour. 

Happy midsummer to you to.

[CatPoet]

 

 

 

 

It turned out lovely even if  I had 50 grams more  chocolate,   they changed the chocolate  bar to contain 50 grams more then before.. Woops and when you have a toddler who things she is Tenzing Norgay, well mummy ( when home alone) has to run and sometimes get lost  in the recipe. Also my electric whisk died  when the  egg whites nearly were whisked  perfect.

 

It became moist, soft, airy and  a bit kick in the teeth too much chocolate.,

[Mjx]

That's the way it's come out when I've made it; I'd describe that as 'dense' (i.e. way, way more dense the devil's food cake recipe I have), although I'd also go with 'extremely rich'. It looks deliciious.

[CatPoet]

But it  much softer in texture then a devil food cake,  you can hear the bubbles bursting when cutting it.  Normally mine is higher and not  this compacted.

[paulraphael]

I'm resurrecting this old thread in search of a recipe or template. 

 

The chocolate cakes I make have always been flourless (I spent months working out a recipe many years back) or at least low in flour (I love Pierre Hermé's friend Suzy's cake, and use it as a template for variations).

 

But I'd like to be able to make a chocolate cake with a more traditional American moist-crumb texture. I'd like to be able to do this with great intensity of chocolate—not just generic chocolatiness, but with a three-dimensional explosion of the flavor profile of whatever chocolate I use. Which is why I'm not interested in cakes that use cocoa powder (unless they're just used to supplement the chocolate). I'm also quite biased toward butter over oil, because butter tastes good, especially with chocolate. 

 

Other qualities, like structural strength, keeping ability, etc., are welcome but not priorities. So I'm looking for:

 

-intense, direct chocolate flavor, primarily from chocolate, not cocoa

-large, very moist crumb

-butter, not oil

 

Thoughts?

[Lisa Shock]

Some people I make cakes for really like the Hellman's mayonnaise cake. I converted it to weight based measurement for the dry ingredients because I use the recipe fairly frequently. The cake does not have much structural integrity, but, it's moist and light.

[JeanneCake]

@paulraphael do you have a copy of The Cake Bible?  Or Heavenly Cakes?  Both are by Rose Levy Beranbaum; the first one has several different types of chocolate cake recipes (all with butter, and the Hellman's recipe too)  and the Heavenly Cakes book has a chocolate passion recipe which is excellent too.  I don't have a particular favorite among them, they are all good.  I also like the chocolate cake recipe in Colette Peter's (cake decorating) books but that one also calls for coffee which you may or may not choose to use.

[paulraphael]

12 hours ago, JeanneCake said:

@paulraphael do you have a copy of The Cake Bible?  Or Heavenly Cakes?  

 

I have TCB, but have been under the assumption that her methods are about giving a finer crumb, like a sarah lee cake. Am I wrong about that?

[JeanneCake]

Her cakes have a fine crumb, yes; the Hellman's not so much (not bad, just different). The Hellman's cake will give you a light, moist crumb; not a fine texture, more of an open crumb.  But the cake that your description called to my mind was the one in TCB where RLB talks about  her mother's reaction to eating it - something along the lines of eating a chocolate bar.  Both copies of the book are at work so I can't look it up to tell which cake it is. 

[MelissaH]

On 6/23/2018 at 7:46 PM, Lisa Shock said:

Some people I make cakes for really like the Hellman's mayonnaise cake. I converted it to weight based measurement for the dry ingredients because I use the recipe fairly frequently. The cake does not have much structural integrity, but, it's moist and light.

Would you mind sharing those?

[pastrygirl]

On 6/23/2018 at 9:37 AM, paulraphael said:

Other qualities, like structural strength, keeping ability, etc., are welcome but not priorities. So I'm looking for:

 

-intense, direct chocolate flavor, primarily from chocolate, not cocoa

-large, very moist crumb

-butter, not oil

 

Thoughts?

 

My thoughts ... why are you so against cocoa?  Cocoa is simply chocolate with most of the cocoa butter removed and without added sugar.  I think in a cake where you're already adding fats and sugars, cocoa powder makes sense.  Maybe explore cocoa powders?  They are not all created equal, I prefer Valrhona.  I think if you want to showcase the flavor of a particular chocolate bar, that may be better done in a ganache filling or icing where you don't have all those other ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, eggs, etc) masking it.

 

 

[paulraphael]

1 hour ago, pastrygirl said:

 

My thoughts ... why are you so against cocoa?  Cocoa is simply chocolate with most of the cocoa butter removed and without added sugar.  I think in a cake where you're already adding fats and sugars, cocoa powder makes sense.  Maybe explore cocoa powders?  They are not all created equal, I prefer Valrhona.  I think if you want to showcase the flavor of a particular chocolate bar, that may be better done in a ganache filling or icing where you don't have all those other ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, eggs, etc) masking it.

 

 

 

I'm not really against cocoa, but for whatever reason I don't think anyone's making cocoa powders to the same standards as their bittersweet chocolates. In some recipes it doesn't matter, in others it really seems to. For example, none of the companies that make my favorite chocolates, like Michel Cluizel, Amadei, Domori, or Valrhona, makes any single-origin cocoa powders. Some of them make commercial offerings with different structural features (fat%, dutched or not, etc.) but they don't offer the unique and varied flavors you get in the chocolates. 

 

This may not matter in cakes ... it's possible that there's too much other stuff in the way to mask the distinct flavors. But I'm not assuming it's so. 

[Tri2Cook]

The thing is, some of your requests come with very specific parameters that make the likelihood of anybody having something that fits pretty small. That's not a criticism at all, it's great. I'm all for knowing what you want and going after it, I just think this is going to be one of those situations where a bit (or a lot) of experimenting is going to be involved. As I'm sure you know, sometimes what you want doesn't exist and you have to figure out how to make it exist. I don't think I've ever experienced a more traditional style cake where I could tell you which chocolate was used in it if I wasn't the one who put it in there.

[paulraphael]

2 hours ago, Tri2Cook said:

The thing is, some of your requests come with very specific parameters that make the likelihood of anybody having something that fits pretty small. That's not a criticism at all, it's great. I'm all for knowing what you want and going after it, I just think this is going to be one of those situations where a bit (or a lot) of experimenting is going to be involved. As I'm sure you know, sometimes what you want doesn't exist and you have to figure out how to make it exist. I don't think I've ever experienced a more traditional style cake where I could tell you which chocolate was used in it if I wasn't the one who put it in there.

 

I don't doubt you're right, and since cakes aren't my area of expertise it doesn't make sense for me to set off pushing boundaries and experimenting. I just figured why not start with a wish list, and if Santa says No, I'll have to figure out which compromises to make. The bittersweet chocolate may have to go. 

 

I'm facing the same issues with chocolate ice cream, but plan to take that one on as a challenge.

[Tri2Cook]

57 minutes ago, paulraphael said:

 

I don't doubt you're right, and since cakes aren't my area of expertise it doesn't make sense for me to set off pushing boundaries and experimenting.
 

That may be the best reason of all to give it a shot... no ingrained "you can't" or "that won't". Just an idea, an end goal and an open canvas. I was by no means suggesting it can't be done or that compromise is the only option. I just don't have the answer myself, it doesn't fall within the scope of anything I've done. What I think will be the biggest hurdle, you've already recognized. Your chocolate of choice not being overwhelmed into obscurity by the other ingredients.

[Lisa Shock]

18 hours ago, MelissaH said:

Would you mind sharing those?

Noted, will put something in the Recipe Gullet soon.