Day 25: Praline Turtle Cake

We had some friends over for dinner so I thought I’d make a fancier cake for the occasion. Or I was just in the mood for chocolate; who needs an occasion, right?

The recipe comes from Country Living’s “Mom’s Best Cake Contest.” One of the winners, indeed.

The Recipe

1/2 cup(s)	butter
1 cup(s)	brown sugar
1 can(s)	(14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
1 cup(s)	chopped pecans
2 cup(s)	all-purpose flour
3/4 cup(s)	unsweetened cocoa
2 cup(s)	granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon(s)	baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon(s)	baking soda
1 teaspoon(s)	salt
2 large	2 large eggs
1 cup(s)	sour cream
1/2 cup(s)	canola oil
1 teaspoon(s)	vanilla extract
1 teaspoon(s)	white vinegar
1/2 cup(s)	fudge topping
1/2 cup(s)	chocolate chips, melted

1. Make the cake: Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter the bottoms of two 9-inch round cake pans and fit a circle of parchment paper large enough to cover 1 inch up the side of each cake pan. Heat the butter, brown sugar, and sweetened condensed milk in a 2-quart saucepan over medium heat until the butter melts and the sugar is dissolved. Do not boil. Divide the sugar mixture between the prepared pans. Sprinkle 3/4 cup pecans over sugar mixture and set aside to cool. Combine the flour, cocoa, granulated sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl. Add the eggs, sour cream, oil, vanilla, and vinegar, and 1 cup hot water and mix with a wooden spoon until the batter is smooth. Pour the batter into the cake pans — over sugar mixture — and bake until a wooden skewer inserted into the cake center comes out clean — 35 to 40 minutes. Cool cakes in the pans for 10 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the pans and turn cakes out onto a cooling rack. Remove the paper and cool completely.
2. Assemble the cake: Spread the fudge topping over the sugar mixture side of one cake layer. Place the second layer over the first and drizzle with the melted chocolate and the remaining 1/4 cup pecans. Frost the cake sides with your favorite chocolate icing.

My Alterations

Looking at the recipe, I knew that if I didn’t cut it in half — even with guests coming over to help us eat it — I would end up with a massive cake again. Seeing as this is my twenty-fifth cake this month, I’m pretty much drowning in cake and not really interested in leftovers. So I used half of every quantity listed (although I didn’t want to figure out what half of 3/4 cup is, so I just used 1/3 cup instead).

There were a few errors in the recipe; firstly, the ingredients list calls for two lots of baking soda, so I just assumed it meant baking powder for one of them. Luckily, the amounts were the same, so it took most of the guesswork out. In the directions, there is mention of adding a cup of hot water to the batter, but that is not listed in with the ingredients. That threw me for a minute, but since the water is definitely needed to thin the batter before baking, it wasn’t a problem. Just a lesson in Reading Carefully, I guess.

I couldn’t track down condensed milk, so I used evaporated milk instead. I think it’s a bit thinner than condensed milk, so the sugar/butter/milk concoction was quite thin. When I poured the cake batter over the top, it sort of all mixed together instead of layering. Ah well.

I used dark chocolate chips for the drizzling part of the recipe, because I don’t have any milk chocolate chips and didn’t want to buy anything extra. Dark chocolate is better, anyway, so it’s all good. The caramel sauce is aimed for drizzling over ice cream. I figured it would work in other settings, too.

The Result

The baking parchment (greaseproof paper) worked really well, as you can see:

There would have been a lot of mess in my oven (okay, okay, a lot more mess) if not for that paper keeping most of the batter from bubbling over. The cakes baked in good time, and even though I halved the recipe, I had enough for two good-sized cakes. I even managed to layer them on top of each other and added the required caramel sauce and stuff.

The Verdict

Heavenly. Divine. Rich, decadent, lovely. The cake itself is just perfect, and I will probably use that as my basic chocolate cake recipe from now on. I think the sour cream really gives it a richness and depth of flavour that wouldn’t be there with just normal milk. Yum! The cake really does remind you of a praline turtle candy, so it’s a well-named recipe. It really deserved winning that cake contest, I have to say.

The Rating

5/5

I love this cake! It’s one of the best. I know I’ve said I don’t like nuts in my cakes, but I might have to repeal that statement for this one in particular. The caramelized topping worked amazingly well with this moist, rich chocolate cake. Delicious.

Day 3: Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake

I use whole wheat flour quite regularly in baking; this recipe comes from a very informative booklet produced by my church called “Cooking with Wheat.” My supply of whole wheat flour was diminishing, so I decided to finish off what I had with this recipe. There were many other desserts made with whole wheat flour, so I’m sure I’ll come back to this booklet again.

I have to admit, however, that the idea of mayonnaise in cake sort of grossed me out. Mayonnaise is tangy! Chocolate cake shouldn’t be tangy! Ewww! I put my reservations aside, however, because the mayonnaise seems to take the place of egg and butter/oil in the recipe, so the cake should work. In theory.

The Recipe

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup sugar

½ tsp salt

2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp vanilla

4 Tbs cocoa

1 cup warm water

1 cup mayonnaise

Put all ingredients in bowl; mix thoroughly; put into a greased and floured tin. Bake at 350F/180C/Gas 4 for 30 minutes or until springs back when touched. When cool, top with chocolate butter icing.

My Alterations

I stuck to the recipe pretty closely. It was incredibly easy – dump in bowl, mix, bake. Those are the best kinds of recipes!

The only difference was my use of flours. I ran out of regular whole wheat flour, and ended up using wholegrain spelt flour. It has a different taste and texture to whole wheat flours, and it did make a difference in the cake.

As shown on the flour packaging:

Ancient relative of modern wheat, spelt grain, triticum speltum, was widely grown by the Romans. This 100% wholegrain flour has complex flavours and bakes a delicious loaf.

The Results

I was worried that the mayonnaise would give the cake a tangy after-taste, but I couldn’t taste anything out of the ordinary. In fact, the cake turned out very light and flavourful. The spelt flour was too bitty, making the cake itself taste a bit grainy and with a slight wheaty, nutty taste. I would expect that from a cake made with any whole wheat flour, but I would have preferred a finer grain flour than what I used.

The Verdict

This is definitely a good cake. It’s easy to make, and chances are you’ll have all the ingredients in your house without having to make a special trip to get anything. On those days when you want cake or need to take cake to a function and suddenly ran out of eggs, this is a perfect substitute.

I would try it with a finer whole wheat flour, to see if that improves the texture. If you aren’t a big whole wheat flour fan, using half wheat and half white flour would work just as well.

The Rating

4/5

Easy to bake, great flavour and texture. Experiment with different flours.

Day 2: Black Magic Cake

Recipe taken from Allrecipes website. I adore this website. The search engine is very easy to use, and you can even search by ingredients rather than recipe name. The ratings system is very reliable, and I like reading through user reviews, gleaning ideas and inspiration from their experiences with the recipes. I found this recipe by searching for cakes with buttermilk in the ingredients list, because I had to use mine up and couldn’t think of anything else to do with it. Recipe is reproduced as it appears on the website.

The Recipe

INGREDIENTS

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups white sugar
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup strong brewed coffee
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour two 9 inch round cake pans or one 9×13 inch pan.
2. In large bowl combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Make a well in the center.
3. Add eggs, coffee, buttermilk, oil and vanilla. Beat for 2 minutes on medium speed. Batter will be thin. Pour into prepared pans.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 to 40 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes, then remove from pans and finish cooling on a wire rack. Fill and frost as desired.

My Alterations

The major alteration I had to make in this recipe was the coffee. I’m not a coffee drinker, and it was a bit of a head scratcher trying to think up a replacement. Coffee is pretty much just flavoured water, so I couldn’t replace the liquid with milk or cream. In the end, I chose to use peppermint flavouring. I put about a teaspoon into a cup of water, and carried on from there.

The Results

When mixing the dry ingredients, be careful. If you are heavy-handed like me, you’ll end up with flour all over your clothes! (whoops) I’m used to mixing the wet ingredients first and then adding dry ingredients a little at a time.

The recipe states that the batter will be thin, but I thought it was pretty average. It was thinner than the Carrot Cake batter, but there weren’t any chunks in the batter bulking it out like the other cake. However, there was a lot more batter than I expected. I didn’t want to overfill my round cake tins, so I ended up having to use three tins instead of two. I baked them for 25 minutes or so, checking on them every few minutes until I was happy they were done.

The cake turned out wonderfully. It is very moist and rich, but the chocolate flavour isn’t overpowering. The watered-down peppermint gives the cake a slight mint aftertaste, but it’s hardly noticeable.

I don’t usually go for frosting on my cakes. I’m not very good at making it, and I prefer the (shockingly) expensive store-bought stuff anyway, so frosting is a rarity. My husband saw the three layers stacked on top of each other with no decoration, and decided to make some Dream Whip for the cake. It’s very similar to Cool Whip, but it comes in powder form so you have to add milk and whip it up. I spread the dream whip onto each layer, along with some blackcurrant jam, except for the top which was dream whip on its own.

The other downside to frosting is that the cake has to live in the fridge for it to keep. My cakes go stale very fast in the fridge, and I don’t really like eating cold cake. But that’s just me.

The Verdict

This is a great chocolate cake. The peppermint mixed with blackcurrant jam was a bit odd, but not unpleasant or anything. If I did it again with peppermint, I would do a chocolate sauce to replace the jam; that would have finished it off nicely.

I don’t think I’ll make it again, though, simply because I can’t think of a decent substitute for the cup of coffee. There is already vanilla in the recipe, so that’s out… perhaps lemon would work? Melted chocolate? However, if you are a coffee drinker, this cake would be perfect for you.

The Rating

3/5

I gave this cake three stars simply because of my coffee troubles. It’s a shame, because it’s easily worth four stars otherwise!