Week 1: Basic Golden Cake Layers with Whipped Ganache

"There's something magical about the process of making a cake form scratch, a process that transforms a few simple ingredients - butter, sugar, flour and eggs - into a culinary artistry. "

-Tish Boyle

For my first cake I decided to go for simplicity: Yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Growing up my grandma would make this combo every year for my mom's birthday. I always looked forward to it and it's one of the reasons I love cake the way I do today.

The recipe is on page 120 and it's called "Basic Golden Layers".  It was very basic - cake flour, baking soda, salt, butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and milk.

The recipe refers to a heavy duty mixer, which I do not own. I used a hand held mixer instead. For this basic recipe the hand held mixer worked fine, but I can see if I continue with this endeavour I'm going to have to invest in a heavy duty mixer.

I chose the Whipped Ganache from page 321 for the frosting. The ganache was also very basic - cream, bittersweet chocolate and a dash of Grand Marnier.

Ta-Da!

Light, soft yellow cake covered in airy chocolate frosting! Delicious! Far above any thing I have EVER made out of a box.

The cake was wonderful. Not too sweet - just soft and light.
The frosting reminds me of chocolate mousse. Very chocolaty and also light.
Quite the decadent dessert!

For my first cake I am very happy. I think the next time I make this Golden Layer cake I will try a different frosting, something non chocolaty. I think vanilla or even just a basic white to make the dessert a little on the lighter side. Fresh berries on top would also compliment this cake well.

The frosting was very rich. I loved it, but I think it needs a different cake. Not sure exactly what cake that is yet.

This is going to be so fun!

Jodi


Notes:

• for the 25-30 minutes instructed as cook time, definitely start with 25. I did 30 and the cake was a little dryer than I like)
• work on evening the batter out in the pans before baking
• next time use more frosting on the first layer. There is more than enough frosting to have a thick middle layer.